A new report from the University of California San Diego indicates that a shocking number of students entering the University of California system lack the math skills one would expect from a middle school student.
Some of this can be blamed on school closures during Covid, but not all of it. At the end of the day, this is a failure of the schools and teachers that failed to impart these basic skills.
It’s also an excellent reminder that not everyone needs to go to college. If you can’t do high school level math, why should you even be considered?
Newsweek reported:
Students at California University Without 8th Grade Math Skills Skyrockets
A sharp rise in students entering the University of California system without middle school-level math skills is raising alarms among educators.
A new internal report from the University of California, San Diego (UCSD) reveals that the percentage of incoming students scoring below Algebra 1 on placement exams—a math course typically completed by the end of eighth grade—has tripled over the past five years.
Why It Matters
In 2020, just 6 percent of first-year students at UCSD placed below Algebra 1. By 2025, that number had surged to 18 percent, according to the UCSD Senate Admissions Working Group (SAWG) report.
The findings reflect a growing disconnect between high school transcripts and actual college readiness. The SAWG report links the increase to pandemic-era learning disruptions, long-standing inequities in California’s K–12 system, and the elimination of standardized testing requirements in UC admissions.
What To Know
The number of UCSD students requiring Math 2, a course originally designed for less than 1 percent of the incoming class, surged from under 100 students annually to over 900 by fall 2024.
This example of an easy question failed by many students is just stunning.
The UCSD math department administered a test to 138 students in a remedial math class, and 25% of them got this question wrong: https://t.co/JnPtiUa6ua pic.twitter.com/gS39XPmSnk
— Steve McGuire (@sfmcguire79) November 12, 2025
Education Secretary Linda McMahon commented on this:
Problem #1: We’re teaching remedial math to college freshmen.
Problem #2: 25% of them can’t answer a basic question.
Our education system has failed our students long before they reach college. https://t.co/6MMU2dbOPP
— Secretary Linda McMahon (@EDSecMcMahon) November 13, 2025
How many of these students do you suppose are very familiar with the progressive concepts of social justice, equity, DEI, and gender?
Schools somehow never fail to teach those ideas to American students. It’s only the difficult and more important topics like math that always seem to slip through the cracks.
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