The Bigger Picture Beyond the UCSD Math Report (opinion)

"The recent news about plummeting math preparation among University of California, San Diego, students was startling: Over five years, the number of incoming students deemed to need remedial math courses before taking calculus had risen from 32 in 2020 to more than 900 last fall. Math achievement declines across the country are real, but data from a single campus is not representative, even if it makes national news. In fact, UCSD offers a poor reference point for policy discussions in California and most other states, given how unique its approach to math proficiency has been."

"First, since the campus requires calculus for the vast majority-up to 80 percent-of its graduates, students whose educational goals don't even require knowledge of calculus can nevertheless be waylaid by a battery of calculus-prep courses. Nationwide, 54 percent of students at R-1 universities graduate in majors that require calculus, according to Transforming Postsecondary Education in Math. Even taking into account UCSD's relatively high proportion of STEM majors, TPSE estimates that only 59 percent of students there actually need calculus."

"Why the discrepancy? One reason is that one of the campus's residential colleges requires every student-even those majoring in art-to take calculus. Plus the departments of psychology (for a B.S.) and biology require two calculus courses. The role of calculus in these two majors is narrow, yet a report from a UCSD Academic Senate working group notes that they account for the majority of the students UCSD requires to take its lowest-level remedial math course."

UC San Diego recorded a sharp rise in incoming students needing remedial math before calculus, from 32 in 2020 to over 900. The campus mandates calculus for a large share of graduates, including requirements from a residential college and B.S. tracks in psychology and biology, which increases remedial enrollment even when calculus is not essential. UCSD relies on a lengthy prerequisite sequence and even offers a middle-school math course, rather than using just-in-time supports. These institutional choices make UCSD anomalous among UC and California public colleges and limit its representativeness for policy.

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