UC Regents delay decision on reinstating SAT, ACT requirement until 2027

Oakland, Calif. - The University of California system has postponed a decision on whether to bring back standardized testing requirements for student applications, giving itself until June 2027 to make a final call. The UC Board of Regents made the announcement at their meeting this week, which non-profit education news reporters from EdSource.org covered. 

Michelle Quinn, executive editor of the nonprofit news site EdSource spoke with KTVU about the meeting and the overall issue. Their reporters covered the UC Regents meeting. She said the renewed debate about the merits of standardized tests for college admissions was sparked by a letter signed by roughly 3,000 UC professors in May.

"What math and STEM professors were saying in that letter, is that students were coming to college, unprepared," Quinn said. "[Professors said students] may not even have the basics of middle school math. And so they were either having to do a lot of remedial work or failing people pretty quickly."

Quinn said the letter, which originated at UC San Diego in November, calls for reinstating the SAT so faculty can better gauge students' academic preparation. She said the push reflects broader concerns about grade inflation, pandemic-related learning loss, and the growing use of artificial intelligence, all of which she said may be eroding the reliability of high GPAs as a measure of student readiness.

The UC system paused its SAT and ACT requirements during the COVID-19 pandemic, a decision Quinn said was driven in part by logistical challenges and equity concerns.

"It was actually also an equity question," Quinn said. "Who does the SAT sort of highlight and who does it kind of leave out of going to a UC? And what is the purpose of higher education in UC and CSU in particular?"

Quinn said critics of standardized testing have argued that students with access to tutoring and test preparation, often from higher-income families, have historically had an advantage on the SAT. She said UC applications spiked after the testing requirement was dropped, though it remains unclear whether that shift improved socioeconomic, racial or ethnic diversity among applicants.

The decision on whether to reinstate the requirement will ultimately fall to the UC Board of Regents, based on a recommendation from the Academic Senate, the faculty body reviewing the issue. Quinn said the timeline, originally expected to extend even further into the future, was shortened to June 2027 after backlash from critics who wanted a faster resolution.

Quinn said the updated timeline reflects a sense of urgency, but also careful consideration of a politically delicate issue. "They don't wanna just rely on what was done in 2020 or in the 70s when they brought in the SAT," Quinn said. "I think their view was, 'Let's figure out who we are now and make a deliberate decision."

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