This California Educational Juggernaut Doesn’t Need the SAT
When the University of California eliminated the SAT requirement for admission in 2021, U.C.L.A. saw a significant jump in applications from high-achieving Black and Latino students, for whom the standardized tests had been a barrier. “We are enrolling one of the most academically accomplished and diverse classes in our history,” the admissions director wrote. Since then, applications have risen at all nine undergraduate campuses, the most prestigious have become increasingly selective, and the university retains and graduates students at record rates.
Yet just five years later, the University of California is embroiled again in a very public battle over whether to reinstate the SAT. Faculty, whose 2020 recommendation to retain the test was overruled, have led the charge. In a widely circulated letter and opinion piece (both edited with the help of artificial intelligence), a math professor who organized the campaign blamed the test-blind admissions policy for a troubling increase in undergraduates who lack basic skills.
Math literacy is a real issue, not only in California, and not only since the elimination of the SAT for admissions. The argument that reinstituting the standardized test will rectify the math crisis, however, obscures a more fundamental debate over the mission of this elite public university and the longstanding tension between its twin goals of excellence and access.
The University of California is an educational juggernaut that has helped propel the state to its status as the world’s fourth-largest economy. It has arguably made its most important contribution not in Nobel Prizes, patents and scientific breakthroughs but in the lives of those not born into privilege. At a time of obscene wealth and inequality, that role has never been more important. The SAT fight is a proxy for a far more complex challenge: the university’s responsibility to remain true to its founding mission, crucial if the Golden State is to maintain its reputation as a land of opportunity and dreams.
