Nearly 1 in 5 UC freshmen are flunking math, double the rate from 5 years ago

melbournesky

Isn't more important that the classroom is an accurate representation of the various groups applicants fall into? If 15% of the population identifies as a box of rocks, it's important that their diverse ideas are included. We're stronger with more diverse viewpoints..

orionblastar

Mirror without Google logon: https://archive.is/OiezX

SBNakta

The illusion that higher education is achievable without securing foundational mathematical reasoning is dangerous. It may just be another expense that accumulates opportunity costs, driving meaningless intellectual snobbery and labor-market mismatch.

johng

CA keeps leading the way in all kinds of good categories. Keep it up.

derbOac

Worth noting that there have been national declines in math for older children during the pandemic that haven't really reversed. It has for younger kids though: https://www.nationsreportcard.gov/ltt/2025/

thighbaugh

Doesn't help they are in their late teens, early 20s and excepted to forego the screaming of their hormones to become a good worker drone for the same plutocrats filling them with media about wild college tours of bacchanalia while luring them to burden themselves with debt enough the poor earnest slobs will try to pay back so they enter the workforce and contribute to making those plutocrats wealthy while being too dull or domain specific to replace those plutocrats. Yeah its freedom alright, freedom to chose coke or pepsi to swallow your pills then you better get back to work, otherwise you could be like that homeless man you stepped over coming in.

lshivamber

The article points to one root cause: “The failure rate has climbed substantially since the UC system dropped the SAT and ACT as admission requirements. The 2020-21 academic year was the last in which the standardized tests were required for freshman admission.” And… “The rate jumped to 13% in 2021-22 before dipping slightly to 12.6% the following year. It climbed to 15.3% in 2023-24, eased to 14.9% in 2024-25 and then surged to its highest level in 2025-26.”

Fantosism

I remember Khan Academy coming out in 2008 and it was able to invigorate a love in Math that I had lost many years prior. I understand COVID, and the difficulties these kids have faced with remote learning, but I'm struggling to understand how a summer before school spent on Khan Academy preparing you for "everything you missed" is somehow not possible for 1/5 kids to accomplish?