Harvard is not alone. UC students Without 8th Grade Math Skills Skyrockets

[Anonymous]

Everyone loves to find fault with Harvard or other elite institutions, or even flagship public universities, but the truth of the matter is, the kids of this generation are not okay. They were raised on screens, and now having ChatGPT do their homework and a lot of their critical thinking for them.

It's not even their fault, because their parents and their school systems are the ones who enabled this to begin with!

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Everyone loves to find fault with Harvard or other elite institutions, or even flagship public universities, but the truth of the matter is, the kids of this generation are not okay. They were raised on screens, and now having ChatGPT do their homework and a lot of their critical thinking for them.

It's not even their fault, because their parents and their school systems are the ones who enabled this to begin with!

The problem is the univ of cal has tens of thousands of better qualified applicants to choose from who don't have these limitations. Instead, in the name of equity it chose to admit less qualified ones. What the UC's have done is entirely purposeful. It is a feature, not a bug. You are just seeing the objective result of that.

[Anonymous]

Blog post about this:
https://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2025/11/ucsd-faculty-sound-alarm-on-declining-student-skills.html

"Alarmingly, the instructors running the 2023-2024 Math 2 courses observed a marked change in the skill gaps compared to prior years. While Math 2 was designed in 2016 to remediate missing high school math knowledge, now most students had knowledge gaps that went back much further, to middle and even elementary school. To address the large number of underprepared students, the Mathematics Department redesigned Math 2 for Fall 2024 to focus entirely on elementary and middle school Common Core math subjects (grades 1-8), and introduced a new course, Math 3B, so as to cover missing high-school common core math subjects (Algebra I, Geometry, Algebra II or Math I, II, III; grades 9-11)."

https://marginalrevolution.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/11/math-768x649.png

Quote from report:

"UC San Diego is proud to be a leading public university that serves not only the privileged few but the full spectrum of California’s population. If we take seriously our mission as an engine of social mobility, we must be prepared to support students who have been underserved by their
prior schooling. But our capacity is not limitless. We can only help so many students, and only when the gaps they need to overcome are within reach.

Admitting large numbers of students who are profoundly underprepared risks harming the very students we hope to support, by setting them up for failure. It also puts significant strain on faculty who work to maintain rigorous instructional standards. Especially now, when our resources become more constrained, we cannot take on more remedial education than we can responsibly and effectively deliver."

Full report here:
https://senate.ucsd.edu/media/740347/sawg-report-on-admissions-review-docs.pdf

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Isn't it good that they are catching this and students can learn math properly? Some high schools don't have good math teachers. Not everyone is able to go to good public/private schools with good teaching. Also, the fact that numbers have tripled in recent years probably has to do with covid, online learning, and just bad math teachers.

Community college is the place to remediate algebra 1, not a UC campus. Even at a school with poor teaching, students who care can self-teach via Khan academy. COVID might have made it easier to cheat, but math teachers have not gotten significantly worse over the past 5 years

I think that one problem is that these are kids who came up behind during the peak No Child Left Behind years, and the NCLB curriculum strategies and standardized tests were stupid.

NCLB was supposed to be a bipartisan thing but got hijacked by malignant narcissists who masqueraded as progressives.

The malignant narcissists used the NCLB effort to push schools to meet all sorts of utopian objectives and failed to give much attention to boring, old-fashioned education basics.

So, we’ve ended up with kids who pretend to have sophisticated critical thinking and problem-solving skills but who can’t actually use capital letters properly or add two-digit numbers.

This is an example of why today’s partisanship is so dangerous and why centrists need to make a comeback. We’ve somehow turned knowing how to use commas and memorizing the times tables into Republican activities. That’s absurd.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Everyone loves to find fault with Harvard or other elite institutions, or even flagship public universities, but the truth of the matter is, the kids of this generation are not okay. They were raised on screens, and now having ChatGPT do their homework and a lot of their critical thinking for them.

It's not even their fault, because their parents and their school systems are the ones who enabled this to begin with!

The problem is the univ of cal has tens of thousands of better qualified applicants to choose from who don't have these limitations. Instead, in the name of equity it chose to admit less qualified ones. What the UC's have done is entirely purposeful. It is a feature, not a bug. You are just seeing the objective result of that.

There are two problems. One problem is we need better selection for rigorous universities that want to remain rigorous, and yes I agree. But perhaps the even bigger societal problem is that there are fewer qualified students in general.

[Anonymous]

I didn't see this mentioned upthread, but current calc students were taking algebra 1 via virtual learning, and California held on much longer with virtual than a lot of other places.

We are in a different state, but my junior in calc BC has all kinds of holes from prealgebra in 6th (20-21 school year), which was mostly virtual. Lots of bad habits (yes, googling answers, not doing homework, etc). This shows up randomly, like in SAT prep.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I didn't see this mentioned upthread, but current calc students were taking algebra 1 via virtual learning, and California held on much longer with virtual than a lot of other places.

We are in a different state, but my junior in calc BC has all kinds of holes from prealgebra in 6th (20-21 school year), which was mostly virtual. Lots of bad habits (yes, googling answers, not doing homework, etc). This shows up randomly, like in SAT prep.

(and after getting a 5 on AP Precalc)

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Everyone loves to find fault with Harvard or other elite institutions, or even flagship public universities, but the truth of the matter is, the kids of this generation are not okay. They were raised on screens, and now having ChatGPT do their homework and a lot of their critical thinking for them.

It's not even their fault, because their parents and their school systems are the ones who enabled this to begin with!

The problem is the univ of cal has tens of thousands of better qualified applicants to choose from who don't have these limitations. Instead, in the name of equity it chose to admit less qualified ones. What the UC's have done is entirely purposeful. It is a feature, not a bug. You are just seeing the objective result of that.

100% correct.

[Anonymous]

^Idk, maybe fall 2025 freshman would have taken algebra 1 in 8th, in 2020-21, so maybe my timing's off.

One other issue is that California revamped its math pathways sometime just before that, many high schools going with integrated math. The old "Math Wars" that go round and round.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I didn't see this mentioned upthread, but current calc students were taking algebra 1 via virtual learning, and California held on much longer with virtual than a lot of other places.

We are in a different state, but my junior in calc BC has all kinds of holes from prealgebra in 6th (20-21 school year), which was mostly virtual. Lots of bad habits (yes, googling answers, not doing homework, etc). This shows up randomly, like in SAT prep.

(and after getting a 5 on AP Precalc)

Lots of people do very well in calculus even though they are horrible at algebra. I think this is because calculus is much easier to understand conceptually, so if the test is primarily on those concepts, you'll do well. The algebra part of calculus is where you'll mess up.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Isn't it good that they are catching this and students can learn math properly? Some high schools don't have good math teachers. Not everyone is able to go to good public/private schools with good teaching. Also, the fact that numbers have tripled in recent years probably has to do with covid, online learning, and just bad math teachers.

Community college is the place to remediate algebra 1, not a UC campus. Even at a school with poor teaching, students who care can self-teach via Khan academy. COVID might have made it easier to cheat, but math teachers have not gotten significantly worse over the past 5 years

I think that one problem is that these are kids who came up behind during the peak No Child Left Behind years, and the NCLB curriculum strategies and standardized tests were stupid.

NCLB was supposed to be a bipartisan thing but got hijacked by malignant narcissists who masqueraded as progressives.

The malignant narcissists used the NCLB effort to push schools to meet all sorts of utopian objectives and failed to give much attention to boring, old-fashioned education basics.

So, we’ve ended up with kids who pretend to have sophisticated critical thinking and problem-solving skills but who can’t actually use capital letters properly or add two-digit numbers.

This is an example of why today’s partisanship is so dangerous and why centrists need to make a comeback. We’ve somehow turned knowing how to use commas and memorizing the times tables into Republican activities. That’s absurd.

I agree with you. As a young progressive, I mainly fought to keep religion out of the schools because I came from a school where my biology teacher taught creationism in the classroom. I certainly had no desire to lower academic standards. I like comma use and the times table just as much as anyone else. At this point, I believe that this country is only going to heal itself if moderates can make a comeback.

[Anonymous]

It’s a race to the bottom and eliminating gifted programs is the single dumbest idea in education.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:The dirty little secret of the UC's is that they select a certain percentage from each high school, whether that high school is an overperforming one in Palo Alto or Irvine or an underperforming one in LAUSD.

Prior to tests being banned, the average SAT scores were low, below 1300 at most campuses.

Now that SATs are banned, the equity drive has seen the UC system oversubscribed with low performing students.

Hopefully these students can get the remediation they deserve so they can thrive in more difficult classes.

I’m confused. This isn’t a dirty secret but what most public university systems do. Look at conservative Texas, The UT and A&M system have exactly this and they find ways to make it work. If you want uber competitive only rich white/asian colleges, there’s many top privates to choose from.

UT found the way to make it work: UT is test required and that makes all the difference.

Haha how naive. https://catalog.utexas.edu/search/?P=M%20301" target="_new" rel="nofollow"> https://catalog.utexas.edu/search/?P=M%20301

M 301 (TCCN: MATH 1314). College Algebra.

Subjects include a brief review of elementary algebra; linear, quadratic, exponential, and logarithmic functions; polynomials; systems of linear equations; applications. Three lecture hours a week for one semester. May not be counted toward a degree in mathematics. Credit for Mathematics 301 may not be earned after a student has received credit for any calculus course with a grade of C- or better. Prerequisite: A passing score on the mathematics section of the Texas Higher Education Assessment (THEA) test (or an appropriate assessment test).

M 301 is the lowest-level "precalculus" course we offer. It should be an honest college algebra course, that is, not an intermediate algebra course (which is offered by community colleges and some four-year colleges and which is often equivalent to second-year high school algebra.) This syllabus is written for use in summer school (the only time we offer M 301). It assumes 26 lectures.
Chapter 1 Five Fundamental Themes 5 sections 4 lectures
Chapter 2 Algebraic Expressions 5 sections 4 lectures
Chapter 3 Equations and Inequalities 5 sections 5 lectures
Chapter 4 Graphs and Functions 4 sections 4 lectures
Chapter 5 Polynomial and Rational Functions 4 sections 4 lectures
Chapter 6 Exponential, Logarithmic Functions 4 sections 3 lectures
Chapter 7 Systems of Equations, Inequalities 3 sections 2 lectures

Tests aren’t saving you from this incompetent generation.

Testing forces accountability prior to college admissions. It used to be that if a student was bombing the math SAT, they were incentivized to study and try to raise their scores. Now students can just apply test-optional and sidestep the issue until college. Returning to test-required will absolutely make a difference.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Isn't it good that they are catching this and students can learn math properly? Some high schools don't have good math teachers. Not everyone is able to go to good public/private schools with good teaching. Also, the fact that numbers have tripled in recent years probably has to do with covid, online learning, and just bad math teachers.

+1 Yes, it is good that they are addressing this. What is the alternative no admission for any kids from crappy elementary through high schools that they have zero choice in?

+100 The mission of the UC schools is to educate California kids, and they're doing a great job. UCs have been test blind, and I don't think they're ever going to back to tests. It's working fine for them, and they're willing to remediate kids who need help. I think that's great.

Kids who need remediation should go to CSUs. At some point you have to group students by ability and preparation, and colllege is the latest possible time to do that.

[Anonymous]

I think the UCs serve their residents.

I just don't know why some of these state schools are ranked so highly. Sure, Cal, UCLA, Michigan, etc are tough admits from OOS. But from in state? Not really. And are they great students? Not really. That's fine. I think this is how states should act tbh. But these are not T20 colleges.