Nearly 1 In 5 U. California Freshmen Are Failing Introductory Math

Authored by Gabrielle Temaat via The College Fix,

Nearly one in five freshmen at the University of California are flunking introductory math classes amid widespread calls from faculty to reinstate standardized testing requirements for admissions.

About 18 percent of students either withdrew or received a D or F grade during the 2025-26 school year. This share has nearly doubled from 2020-21, “the last year that the SAT and ACT were required for first-year admission,” according to EdSource.

Further, UC students averaged a GPA of 2.7 in introductory math classes in 2025-26. Students averaged a 3.18 in 2020-21.

However, “Failure rates vary widely across UC’s nine undergraduate campuses, skyrocketing at some while remaining mostly flat at others,” according to EdSource.

UC Merced showed the highest failure or withdrawal rate at 36 percent, while UC Santa Barbara recorded the lowest, at just 8.2 percent.

In response to the new data, a Republican state leader told The New York Post that “California can’t grade their way out of an education crisis.”

“Dropping the SAT and ACT has let far too many students arrive unprepared for even introductory math,” said Sonja Shaw, a candidate for California state superintendent of public instruction.

UC Davis math professor Joel Hass told The Post he was not surprised by the results, as the divide between prepared and unprepared students continues to grow.

“There is a wider range of interest and preparedness,” Hass said. “We still have a good number of highly qualified students, but also many who are unprepared for college. The preparedness gap between these groups is large.”

He added that the state is sending “students who might thrive by first going to the community colleges to UC campuses where they are unprepared for a serious academic environment.”

The new data comes as more than 3,000 California faculty have signed two letters demanding the reinstatement of standardized testing in admissions.

“Over the past five years, we have seen a widening divergence in mathematical preparation levels within the same classroom. This trend indicates that current admissions practices do not provide a sufficiently reliable check on mathematical readiness for STEM majors,” one letter reads.

Further demonstrating this crisis, a University of California Berkeley professor wrote in a recent op-ed that students don’t know how to work with elementary-level fractions, The College Fix previously reported.

“Office hours that should be spent discussing integrals instead become lessons on fractions and basic algebra you would expect students to learn in middle school,” Zvezdelina Stankova wrote in an article published by The San Francisco Standard.