Miriam Pawel has defended the University of California’s test-free admissions policy in the outlet guest essay, acknowledging that students on UC campuses “may struggle with basic math” while praising record graduation rates.
Pawel, a journalist and historian promoting her new book “California Dream: The Making and Remaking of the University of California,” framed the nation’s largest public university system as “an engine of upward mobility,” She wrote that around 40% of UC students are first-generation college attendees, and more than half qualify for free tuition.
“When the University of California eliminated the SAT requirement for admission in 2021, UCLA saw a significant jump in applications from high-achieving black and Latino students, for whom the standardized tests had been a barrier,” she wrote in the Times essay.
She traced the rising percentages of underrepresented students to multiple initiatives. “The California Dream Act gave undocumented students access to financial aid, as well as in-state tuition,” she noted.
The UC Board of Regents voted in 2020 to drop SAT and ACT consideration after lawyers for low-income students argued the exams were “racist.” Pawel urged the system to hold firm against growing pressure to reverse course.
“The University of California needs to redouble its commitment to forge its own path, to remain a beacon of hope, albeit flickering,” she wrote.
That pressure includes an open letter signed by more than 680 professors across the UC system in May. The faculty members called for reinstating standardized tests, describing preparation gaps so severe that instructors must re-teach material students should have mastered years earlier.
“We now observe preparation gaps so severe that instructors must re-teach middle school mathematics while simultaneously teaching the material students need for sciences, engineering, economics and other quantitatively demanding fields,” the professors wrote.
“Furthermore, the widening spread between underprepared and well-prepared students creates polarized courses, weakening the foundation available to many students and making it harder to teach at the level required for advanced STEM work,” they continued.
Some professors have reported students arriving at UC campuses five to eight years behind in math skills. The faculty revolt centers on complaints that watered-down curricula now force college instructors to teach “middle school” math within Calculus and other advanced courses.
Pawel dismissed the professors’ concerns in her essay, casting diploma attainment as the priority regardless of mathematical proficiency.
The debate has divided even readers sympathetic to the Times’ editorial stance. “The problem is that the UCs did sacrifice excellence to increase access,” one commenter wrote beneath Pawel’s essay.
“As a UCLA and UC Berkeley alum, I am deeply concerned that the UC’s current admissions criteria are incompatible with maintaining the standards of excellence and ultimately the reputations of UCLA and UC Berkeley relative to other top 20 universities,” another added.
Pawel’s book tour continues as the UC system weighs whether to maintain its test-free policy amid the faculty backlash.