(The Center Square) – A new report by University of California, San Diego found freshmen are nowhere near ready for college math and writing classes.
The problem isn’t isolated to new students at the southernmost University of California campus, either. The report by the university’s Academic Senate Working Group on Admissions shows that this is a persistent problem at most UC campuses.
“Admitting large numbers of underprepared students risks harming those students and straining limited instructional resources,” the report reads. “We can only help so many students, and only when the gaps they need to overcome are within reach.”
According to the report, the number of freshmen at UC San Diego who did not meet middle-school proficiency standards in mathematics increased nearly 30 times between 2020 and 2025, despite students having taken the required high school math classes.
The report goes on to say that in 2024, two out of five students who needed to take remedial math classes also have to take remedial writing classes.
“UC San Diego is proud to be a leading public university that serves not only the privileged few but the full spectrum of California’s population,” the report goes on to say. “If we take seriously our mission as an engine of social mobility, we must be prepared to support students who have been underserved by their prior schooling. But our capacity is not limitless. We can only help so many students, and only when the gaps they need to overcome are within reach.”
The report’s authors were not available to answer questions from The Center Square on Friday. Other officials who work at UC San Diego also did not respond to The Center Square’s request for comment.
Despite the gap between the student proficiency in math and writing and what is required of them to be successful in college, the California Department of Education issued a press release on Thursday that show that across the state, high school graduation rates have risen, up to 87.5%, more than four points over the 2017 statewide rate. Notably, the department also claimed that college and career readiness went up by 3.1% statewide, reaching 51.7% across the state.
The press release accompanied the publication of the state’s 2025 School Dashboard, which the state publishes every year, reflecting high school graduation rates and other key information for schools, school districts, cities and counties across the state.
“Seeing modest improvement on every dashboard indicator should encourage us to deepen our investments in every child’s progress,” said Tony Thurmond, state superintendent of public instruction, in the press release. “We can see that strategies like community schools and literacy coaches are making a positive impact for the whole child. I am proud of our work to narrow persistent achievement gaps in student outcomes like graduation rate, and we must not rest until all students’ outcomes represent their brilliance and potential.”
The California Department of Education did not respond to calls or emails from The Center Square asking for comment about why high school graduation rates and college readiness rates are up when proficiency in college classes is down.
The UC San Diego report released this month also found that chief among the reasons freshmen aren’t prepared for college is how much learning outcomes dropped amongst children who attended high school during the COVID-19 pandemic. The elimination of using standardized tests like the Scholastic Aptitude Test (SAT), the American College Test (ACT) for college admissions, grade inflation and expanding college admissions to include students from under-resourced high schools have all contributed to the rising number of college students not being prepared for college, the report found.
No school district with at least one high school in the San Diego area replied to The Center Square’s requests for comment.
Another report, this one compiled by the Public Policy Institute of California, also found that college students in California are, by and large, underprepared for higher education. Their April 2025 report shows that students were not as college-ready in 2024 than they were five years before, pointing to a drop of three points from 2019 to 2024.
“Academic preparation is key to college readiness. Students who score ‘Standard Met’ for both reading and math on the grade 11 exams are defined as college ready,” the Public Policy Institute report reads. “In 2024, only 22% of California graduates were rated college ready based on their standardized test scores.”
Other colleges and universities throughout the state, including San Diego State University; the University of San Diego; University of California, Los Angeles; University of California, Berkeley; University of California, Santa Barbara; University of California, Irvine; University of California, Davis, and California Polytechnical State University, San Luis Obispo did not respond to The Center Square on Friday.
The California School Boards Association also did not respond to a request for comment.
