UC Berkeley Math Professor Raises Alarm Over Student Preparedness

A UC Berkeley mathematics professor says she is spending valuable calculus teaching time on material some students should have mastered years earlier. Her claim has reignited a fierce debate over what elite universities should expect from incoming students.

Zvezdelina Stankova says some students arriving in her calculus classes are five to eight years behind in mathematics. She argues that changes to UC admissions have made it harder to identify students who are academically prepared before they arrive on campus.

Berkeley Professor Says The Classroom Has Changed

Stankova teaches mathematics at the University of California, Berkeley, where lecture halls can hold hundreds of students. She says the gap between students entering calculus with a strong foundation and those struggling with basic concepts has become impossible to ignore.

“Some students are five to eight years behind in mathematics,” Stankova wrote in an opinion piece published by the San Francisco Standard.

She said office hours that should be devoted to calculus concepts such as integrals can instead turn into lessons on fractions and basic algebra.

The distinction is significant because calculus assumes a substantial foundation. Students are expected to manipulate equations, understand functions and work comfortably with algebraic expressions before tackling more advanced concepts.

Stankova says that foundation is increasingly uneven.

“Those of us teaching such courses don’t experience the consequences as abstractions,” she wrote. “We watch students struggle through material they were expected to master years earlier.”

According to Stankova, the result is effectively two different groups occupying the same lecture hall. One group is prepared to study college calculus. The other needs remedial instruction that was never supposed to be part of the course.

She argues that professors are then forced to pause advanced lessons and return to concepts such as linear equations.

The Numbers Behind The Calculus Problem

Stankova’s argument is based partly on diagnostic testing given to Berkeley students entering Calculus I.

Before 2020, Berkeley administered a diagnostic exam designed to measure how prepared students were for the course. Between 2018 and 2020, roughly 2,200 students took the assessment.

The figures Stankova cites show a very different distribution from the one she says instructors have seen since the admissions changes.

Before 2020:

• 71% of tested students were considered ready or nearly ready for calculus.
• Just 0.14% tested below basic algebra.
• Most students clustered toward the prepared end of the assessment.

A different diagnostic was used between 2021 and 2023, covering approximately 2,800 Calculus I students.

Stankova says the share considered ready or nearly ready fell to 51% across that period and reached 44% in 2023.

The weakest end of the distribution also grew sharply.

By the 2022-23 academic year, more than one-third of Calculus I students were described as having severe mathematics deficits. Stankova said zero was the most common score on the diagnostic.

That detail is central to her argument.

She says the issue is not simply that students became somewhat weaker at mathematics. The distribution itself changed, leaving instructors with a much larger group of students who lacked basic skills.

The two diagnostics were not identical, which means the figures cannot be treated as a perfect apples-to-apples comparison. Stankova nevertheless argues that the broader pattern is consistent with what professors are seeing inside the classroom.

UC San Diego, she noted, used the same placement test before and after 2020 and documented a similar broad pattern.

Why Standardized Testing Became The Flashpoint

The debate has now moved beyond calculus.

Stankova is among thousands of UC faculty members who have signed open letters calling for the SAT and ACT to be restored as part of admissions.

The University of California moved away from standardized testing in 2020. The decision came during the disruption caused by the COVID-19 pandemic and amid longstanding concerns about equity and the role of standardized exams in college admissions.

Former UC president Janet Napolitano supported the move. A UC task force had previously studied standardized testing and recommended keeping it, but the university system ultimately moved toward eliminating its use.

A court ruling later required UC to become test-blind through 2025.

That meant admissions officers could not use SAT or ACT scores as a common academic benchmark across applicants from California’s many different high schools.

Stankova believes removing that benchmark created a serious problem.

She says grades, school experiences and other admissions materials do not always provide a consistent picture of whether a student is ready for demanding college coursework.

Her critics, however, point to other explanations for declining academic preparation.

The pandemic disrupted schooling for millions of students. California has also faced broader concerns about K-12 mathematics performance. Artificial intelligence and grade inflation have added new complications to the admissions process.

Stankova does not deny those factors.

Her argument is that they cannot fully explain what she sees in the diagnostic results.

Elite Universities Have Already Changed Course

The University of California is now facing pressure from faculty members who say it should reconsider its approach.

Stankova points out that several other highly selective universities made similar testing changes during the pandemic but later reversed them.

Harvard, MIT, Stanford and Yale all suspended testing requirements during the pandemic. The schools have since reinstated standardized testing requirements.

The Ivy League has also seen additional movement back toward testing.

UC Berkeley, meanwhile, has not moved as quickly.

The university system announced a review of its standardized testing policy, but the process is expected to take years. Stankova says the current timeline means no new admissions policy could take effect before fall 2028.

“Students don’t have that kind of time: They attend college once,” she wrote.

That timeline has become one of the most contentious parts of the dispute.

A student applying to college in the next admissions cycle cannot simply wait several years for the university to finish deciding how admissions should work.

For faculty members, that means the question is not theoretical. They continue teaching students under the existing system while the review moves forward.

Faculty Say The Equity Argument Has Backfired

The debate over testing is especially heated because standardized exams have long been criticized for producing unequal outcomes.

Opponents have argued that students from wealthier families can gain advantages through test preparation, tutoring and other resources.

But some UC STEM faculty members now argue that removing standardized testing can create a different kind of inequality.

In a June open letter, UC STEM faculty wrote that an SAT or ACT mathematics requirement should not be viewed as an obstacle to equity.

“The SAT/ACT mathematics requirement is not an obstacle to equity; rather, it is a prerequisite for it,” the faculty members wrote.

Their argument is straightforward.

If students arrive without the mathematical foundation needed for a demanding course, the admissions process has not eliminated the preparation gap. It has simply moved the consequences into college classrooms.

Students who need significant remedial instruction may struggle in courses that move at a college pace. Students who are already prepared can also lose instructional time while professors review material from earlier grades.

The faculty letter argued that honest assessment could help determine what support students need and where they would be best served within California’s public higher education system.

That raises a difficult question for elite universities.

Should admission primarily identify students who have overcome educational disadvantages, or should it also establish whether they are prepared for the specific academic demands of the institution?

The Berkeley dispute shows how difficult it is to separate those goals.

The Problem Goes Beyond One Professor

Stankova’s background gives her criticism additional weight.

She grew up in communist Bulgaria and later earned a PhD from Harvard. She has spent years promoting mathematics education and founded the Berkeley Math Circle, along with a local mathematics olympiad for high school students.

Her concerns are therefore rooted in mathematics education as well as university admissions.

She says faculty members across the UC system have seen enough to justify immediate action. More than two-thirds of UC mathematics faculty members have reportedly signed the open letters supporting a return to standardized testing, alongside five Nobel laureates and other professors.

Jennifer Doudna, the Nobel Prize-winning Berkeley scientist associated with pioneering work in gene editing, also criticized the policy in a letter to UC regents.

“The test-blind policy was a well-intentioned experiment,” Doudna wrote, “but the reality in our classrooms shows that it has failed.”

The disagreement is now bigger than whether one group of calculus students is struggling.

It concerns what an admission to a highly selective university is supposed to signify.

Berkeley remains one of the most selective public universities in the country. Students and families reasonably assume that admission means the student is prepared to handle the academic workload.

Stankova argues that assumption is becoming less reliable.

Two Students Became A Symbol Of The Debate

In her original essay, Stankova described two California students whose admissions outcomes appeared almost impossible to reconcile.

She called them Elias and Nadia, although those were not their real names.

Elias was admitted to a top UC engineering program despite mathematics being his weakest subject in high school.

Nadia, meanwhile, was rejected by UC campuses despite earning A grades in Calculus II and other college-level STEM courses through concurrent enrollment.

Stankova used the cases to illustrate what she believes is a deeper weakness in the admissions system.

She also compared standardized math performance at two Bay Area high schools.

At Dougherty Valley High School in San Ramon, 432 of 756 juniors exceeded California’s math standard in 2024. Of 542 students who applied to Berkeley that fall, 44 were admitted.

At Mission High School in San Francisco, 193 of 202 juniors did not meet the state math standard. Yet 34 of 76 Berkeley applicants were admitted.

Those numbers alone do not establish why individual students were accepted or rejected. Admissions decisions involve many factors beyond mathematics.

Stankova’s point is that the outcomes appear difficult to reconcile when academic preparation is considered.

She argues that a stronger standardized measure could provide admissions officers with another way to distinguish between applicants whose transcripts may look similar but whose preparation differs substantially.

UC Still Has To Decide What Preparedness Means

The University of California has acknowledged that college preparedness is a serious issue.

UC President James B. Milliken said the university leadership and Board of Regents take the question seriously and that the Academic Senate had proposed a comprehensive review of student readiness and success.

The debate is unlikely to disappear simply because the university launches another study.

There are legitimate concerns on both sides of standardized testing. Exams can reflect differences in educational opportunity, and a single score cannot capture everything about a student’s ability or potential.

But the Berkeley calculus data raise a separate question that is harder to dismiss.

If students are arriving at an elite university unable to reliably handle foundational mathematics, the university has to determine how that gap should be identified and addressed.

The answer may involve standardized testing. It may involve a different assessment system. It may also involve stronger preparation before students reach college.

What appears increasingly difficult to defend is ignoring the problem.

For professors standing in front of hundreds of students, the debate over admissions policy eventually becomes very concrete.

A calculus lecture can only move forward when the students in the room have the mathematics needed to follow it. When that foundation is missing, the professor has two choices: slow down or leave students behind.

At Berkeley, Stankova says too many instructors are already being forced to choose.

And while administrators continue reviewing the admissions system, another class of students is already sitting in the lecture hall.