Stunning report on unprepared UCSD students points to larger problem

UC San Diego’s emergence over the past 30 years as one of the world’s great universities — full of talented professors and students — has been heartening to witness for longtime residents and massively beneficial to the regional economy. That’s why it is so jarring to read a lengthy new report from UCSD’s Senate-Administration Working Group on Admissions that says many students can’t answer simple math questions. “Between 2020 and 2025, the number of students whose math skills fall below middle-school level increased nearly 30-fold, reaching roughly one in eight members of the entering cohort,” it stated.

Some 25% of students in need of remedial math training couldn’t figure out the answer to this equation — 7 + 2 = blank + 6 — the sort of problem that California first-graders are expected to master. And 61% were unable to round the number 374,518 to the nearest hundred — a basic task third-graders are drilled on.

The report blamed the pandemic’s effects on the quality of education, the elimination of standardized testing requirements, sharp increases in student admissions from schools in impoverished areas, and high school grade inflation. It offered several thoughtful recommendations to increase preparedness going forward, including developing a “Math Index” to assess student skill levels and bringing UCSD’s admission standards for students from “under-resourced” schools in line with those at other UC campuses.

But the last cause on that list — high school grade inflation — is something that UCSD can’t fix. It is part of a far-reaching educational crisis that demands a much broader response.

The report said even the students admitted in 2024 who were most in need of remedial support had high school math grade point averages of better than 3.6 — and the difference in such GPAs between the least and most prepared entering students was very small.

That doesn’t make any sense. But then the gap between assessments of student progress and what they actually learn has long been on display in California. Statewide, there is an 87.5% graduation rate, according to an official report released Thursday. But the same report said basic metrics showed only about half of graduates — 51.7% — were actually adequately prepared to begin college or start a career. So much for achieving the core goal of K-12 education: producing graduates ready for these challenges.

Who benefits from the state’s exaggeration of the value of a high school degree? The teachers union-allied education establishment, which has long centered the importance of high graduation rates, not high standards. Who applauds the seeming good news? Parents and politicians.

But who is punished by inflated grades and easier graduation? Students who suffer crushing blows to their ego and confidence when real life reveals the truth about their true skill levels.

This is acknowledged in the UCSD report: “Admitting large numbers of students who are profoundly underprepared risks harming the very students we hope to support, by setting them up for failure.”

Education reformers in California racked up their biggest win in decades last month when they finally won passage of a state law improving the abysmal ways reading is taught. It’s time they turned their focus to another immense problem: the declining relevance and the growing meaninglessness of degrees from Golden State high schools.