Testing

UC Freshmen Math Failure Has Nearly Doubled Since 2020: Inside the Regents' Campus-by-Campus Data

R
Rachel KimAI Researched & Written
Senior Admissions Strategist, T20 Hub • AI Editorial Persona
October 19, 2026•12 min read

For nearly a year, the fight over standardized testing at the University of California has been waged through campus-level leaks, diagnostic exam warnings, and faculty petitions signed by more than 3,000 professors and five Nobel laureates.

Now, for the first time, the University of California Office of the President (UCOP) has put the complete systemwide and campus-by-campus grade books on the table.

According to new institutional data presented to the UC Board of Regents in Item A1 (UC STEM Outcomes and Math Innovation) and spotlighted in a data investigation by EdSource on October 19, 2026, the share of UC freshmen who failed to pass introductory mathematics — receiving a grade of D or F, withdrawing, or earning a “no pass” (DFWNP) in Calculus I, precalculus, or preparatory math — has nearly doubled since UC eliminated the SAT and ACT requirement, climbing from 9.2% in 2020–21 to 17.8% (rounded to 18%) in 2025–26.

Over the same period, the average grade point average in UC introductory math courses dropped nearly half a letter grade, sliding from 3.18 in 2020–21 to 2.71 in 2025–26.

Yet the same report contains a paradox that has split UC regents, admissions deans, and STEM faculty into warring camps: overall freshman retention has reached an all-time record high of 93%, and 94% of freshmen who enter UC intending to major in STEM return for their second year.

Even inside the Board of Regents, the numbers are forcing second thoughts. “I have to say that last time around, I voted to get rid of the SAT, and I’m starting to believe I might have made a mistake,” UC Regent Jay Sures told the board during its September 16, 2026 meeting at UCLA.

Here is a deep dive into the full six-year, nine-campus dataset, why introductory math is the lone outlier in UC classrooms, why campuses like UC Merced and UC Riverside are experiencing dramatic spikes while UC Santa Barbara remains at 8.2%, and what families targeting UC STEM programs need to do right now.

1. The Systemwide Trajectory: A Six-Year Slide Isolated to Introductory Math

When UCOP Vice President for Institutional Research and Academic Planning Pamela Brown presented the systemwide outcomes to the Regents’ Academic and Student Affairs Committee, one finding stood out above all others: across almost every academic discipline at UC, lower-division grades and course completion rates have been rock-solid for five years — except in foundational math.

UC Systemwide Freshman Intro Math Failure Rate (DFWNP %) & Average GPA
(Calculus I, Precalculus, and Preparatory Mathematics)

  2020-21 (Last SAT/ACT Cohort) ──►  9.2% DFWNP  |  3.18 Avg GPA
  2021-22 (First Test-Free Year) ──► 13.0% DFWNP  |  2.95 Avg GPA
  2022-23                        ──► 12.6% DFWNP  |  2.98 Avg GPA
  2023-24                        ──► 15.3% DFWNP  |  2.91 Avg GPA
  2024-25                        ──► 14.9% DFWNP  |  2.81 Avg GPA
  2025-26                        ──► 17.8% DFWNP  |  2.71 Avg GPA

(Note: UCOP notes that 2020–21 coincided with peak pandemic remote instruction, when campuses permitted more flexible pass/no-pass grading policies. However, even measuring strictly from 2021–22 through 2025–26, the introductory math DFWNP rate rose 37% — from 13.0% to 17.8% — while average course GPA fell from 2.95 to 2.71.)

To see how stark this divergence is, compare introductory mathematics against every other lower-division (LD) course category taken by UC freshmen in the UCOP Appendix I data:

Lower-Division Course Category Share of Freshman LD Enrollment (2025–26) Avg GPA (2020–21) Avg GPA (2021–22) Avg GPA (2025–26) DFWNP Rate (2020–21) DFWNP Rate (2021–22) DFWNP Rate (2025–26)
All Lower-Division Courses 100% 3.43 3.32 3.32 5.8% 7.0% 6.7%
Interdisciplinary Courses 5.8% 3.60 3.54 3.63 4.3% 4.0% 2.9%
Arts & Humanities 22.6% 3.53 3.47 3.52 4.7% 5.3% 5.2%
Social Sciences 21.3% 3.49 3.36 3.39 5.9% 6.8% 5.8%
Other STEM (Bio, Chem, Physics, etc.) 28.0% 3.34 3.19 3.22 6.0% 7.6% 6.8%
Engineering & Computer Science 8.1% 3.48 3.41 3.37 6.6% 7.0% 7.0%
Other Math (Beyond Calc I, Stats, etc.) 9.4% 3.39 3.25 3.15 6.2% 8.0% 8.5%
Introductory Math (Calc I, Precalc, Prep) 5.0% 3.18 2.95 2.71 9.2% 13.0% 17.8%

In Arts and Humanities, Social Sciences, Interdisciplinary studies, and even lower-division Engineering and Computer Science, DFWNP rates in 2025–26 are either lower than or identical to where they stood in 2021–22.

In introductory math, however, the non-passing rate (17.8%) is now nearly 2.7 times higher than the systemwide lower-division average (6.7%). Within introductory math, UCOP notes that grades remained comparatively stable in default Calculus and Calculus for Life Sciences, but deteriorated consistently in preparatory courses and precalculus, with the sharpest GPA declines occurring in Calculus for Physical Sciences and STEM.

2. Nine Campuses, Nine Realities: The 28-Point Spread

The headline systemwide number (17.8%) masks an extraordinary divide across UC’s nine undergraduate campuses. As showcased in Yuxuan Xie and Michael Burke’s EdSource analysis and Appendix II of the Regents report, a freshman’s likelihood of failing or withdrawing from introductory math varies by 28.2 percentage points depending on which UC campus they attend:

UC Campus 2020–21 DFWNP 2021–22 DFWNP 2022–23 DFWNP 2023–24 DFWNP 2024–25 DFWNP 2025–26 DFWNP Avg Intro Math GPA (2020–21 → 2025–26) Share of Freshman LD Enrollment (2025–26)
UC Merced 16.1% 27.4% 29.8% 33.5% 34.7% 36.4% 2.61 → 2.03 11.5%
UC Riverside 5.2% 4.5% 6.1% 7.4% 8.3% 20.5% 3.19 → 2.43 7.8%
UC Santa Cruz 6.1% 5.6% 5.5% 9.6% 11.6% 18.9% 3.14 → 2.71 6.5%
UC Davis 13.2% 17.5% 15.5% 19.1% 20.6% 18.4% 2.92 → 2.71 5.0%
UC Irvine 14.4% 21.5% 17.1% 20.9% 16.9% 15.9% 2.88 → 2.87 2.3%
UC San Diego 8.1% 8.7% 9.9% 14.2% 17.6% 15.8% 3.32 → 2.58 4.3%
UC Berkeley 8.0% 14.7% 16.6% 18.1% 11.1% 13.3% 3.40 → 3.06 5.3%
UCLA 6.2% 10.4% 9.7% 9.8% 8.2% 10.7% 3.74 → 3.17 4.3%
UC Santa Barbara 6.8% 8.7% 9.2% 5.9% 7.5% 8.2% 3.46 → 3.26 3.2%

Four critical campus-level patterns emerge from this table:

  1. The Crisis at UC Merced (36.4% DFWNP, 2.03 GPA): More than one in three freshmen enrolled in introductory math at UC Merced in 2025–26 received a D, an F, withdrew, or did not pass, and the average grade hovered barely above a C (2.03). Furthermore, introductory math accounts for 11.5% of all freshman lower-division enrollments at Merced — more than double the systemwide share (5.0%) and five times UC Irvine’s share (2.3%).
  2. The One-Year Shock at UC Riverside (8.3% → 20.5%): For four years after the pandemic, UC Riverside kept its introductory math failure rate under 8.5%. Then, in 2025–26, Riverside’s DFWNP rate surged 12.2 percentage points in a single year to 20.5%, while its average course GPA plunged from 3.03 to 2.43 — the largest single-year deterioration in the system.
  3. The Steady Climb at UC Santa Cruz and UC San Diego: At UC Santa Cruz, introductory math failures more than tripled from 5.5% in 2022–23 to 18.9% in 2025–26. At UC San Diego — where a November 2025 Senate-Administration Workgroup report famously documented a 30-fold surge in freshmen testing below high school math proficiency — the DFWNP rate nearly doubled from 8.1% in 2020–21 to 17.6% in 2024–25 before ticking slightly down to 15.8% in 2025–26, while average GPA fell from 3.32 to 2.58.
  4. Why UC Santa Barbara (8.2%) and UC Irvine (2.3% Enrollment) Look So Different: Structural curriculum differences heavily shape these numbers. UC Santa Barbara is the only UC campus that does not offer precalculus or preparatory math at all — students place directly into Calculus I (MATH 2A/3A or 34A). Conversely, UC Davis, UC Riverside, UC San Diego, and UC Santa Cruz offer articulated preparatory math sequences (courses before precalculus, often for workload-only credit that counts for financial aid but not toward a degree). Depending on placement, a student at UCSB reaches Calculus I in one step, whereas an underprepared student at UC Riverside or UC San Diego may face a five-course sequence just to complete introductory calculus.

3. The Paper Credential Mirage: High School GPAs Are Up, Math Readiness Is Down

Why are nearly 18% of freshmen in introductory math failing or withdrawing when UC’s incoming classes look more accomplished on paper than ever before?

The Regents report lays bare the disconnect between high school transcript credentials and actual quantitative mastery:

  • 66% of Enrollees Have a 4.00+ High School GPA: Between 2015 and 2025, the share of incoming UC freshmen arriving with a weighted high school GPA of 4.00 or higher jumped 14 percentage points, from 52% to 66%.
  • More Advanced & A–G Coursework on Transcripts: Incoming freshmen completed an average of more than 11 advanced (AP, IB, honors, or college-level) semester courses in 10th and 11th grades in 2025, up from 9 in 2016. Average year-long high school math courses rose from 4.1 to 4.6 courses, and unweighted high school math GPAs among UC enrollees rose from 3.49 in 2016 to 3.62 in 2025 (down slightly from a pandemic peak of 3.70 in 2022).
  • Yet Statewide 11th-Grade Math Proficiency Sits Below 31%: While high school GPAs inflated across California, state standardized testing tells a sobering story. On the 2025 California Smarter Balanced Assessment (SBAC), 57% of 11th graders met or exceeded state standards in English Language Arts, and almost 31% met or exceeded standards in mathematics — still below pre-pandemic benchmarks.
  • Preparatory “Remedial” Enrollment Is Growing: Within UC’s introductory math courses, enrollment in preparatory mathematics (pre-precalculus courses covering high school algebra and trigonometry) has grown to approach 9% of all introductory math enrollments in 2025.

As the UCOP report itself concludes on page 17:

“Introductory mathematics is the clearest area warranting continued attention. Declining grades and rising DFWNP rates in Calculus 1, precalculus, and preparatory courses suggest that stronger incoming credentials do not always translate into success in these foundational courses.”

For the more than 3,000 faculty signatories of the UC STEM Faculty Open Letters, that sentence is the entire point: without a standardized exam like the SAT or ACT, admissions readers evaluating applicants across thousands of high schools have no calibrated anchor to distinguish a rigorous 4.0 math GPA from an inflated 4.0 math GPA.

4. The Other Side of the Ledger: Why Only 5% of Classes Are Affected and 94% of STEM Majors Stay

If introductory math failures have nearly doubled, why haven’t UC’s overall retention or graduation rates collapsed? And why did admissions leaders from UCLA and UC Riverside tell the Board of Regents that removing the SAT caused “negligible” harm to student persistence?

The UCOP report and reporting by The LA Globe and the Los Angeles Times highlight three structural reasons why the math crisis has not triggered a systemwide dropout wave:

1. Most UC Freshmen Bypass Introductory Math Entirely

Introductory math (Calculus I, precalculus, and preparatory math) accounts for only 5.0% of all lower-division course enrollments among first-year students systemwide. Tracking the Fall 2023 freshman cohort across their first two years at UC:

  • 41% started in a more advanced math course beyond Calculus I (having already earned credit through AP Calculus AB/BC, IB, community college dual enrollment, or campus diagnostic exams).
  • 28% took no courses in the calculus pathway at all (either majoring in fields without a calculus requirement or fulfilling quantitative reasoning through statistics, data science, or logic).
  • Only 31% took an introductory math course in their first two years — 20% starting in Calculus I and 11% starting in precalculus or preparatory math.

2. Record-High Retention and Graduation Rates

Despite the turbulence in those 5% of classes, systemwide persistence metrics have never been higher:

  • 93% Overall First-Year Retention: Record high across the UC system. At UCLA, Associate Vice Chancellor for Enrollment Management Gary Clark reported that first-year retention has reached 97% and four-year graduation has climbed from 85% to 88%.
  • 94% First-Year Retention for Intended STEM Majors: Freshmen who enter UC intending to major in STEM return for their second year at a higher rate (94%) than non-STEM or undeclared students (92.3%).
  • STEM Students Are Not Fleeing Their Majors: In the 2024 cohort, 83.5% of intended STEM majors remained in their original STEM program into their second year (compared to 78.5% of non-STEM majors), and only 10.5% switched majors (lower than non-STEM’s 13.8% major-change rate and below pre-pandemic 2018 levels).
  • Four-Year STEM Graduation Hit 73.4%: Systemwide four-year graduation rose six percentage points from 68% (2014 cohort) to a record 74% (2021 cohort). For intended STEM majors, four-year graduation rose 5.7 points to 73.4%, and the share graduating within four years in the exact same STEM program jumped 8.7 points from 43.2% to 51.9%.

(One notable caveat in UCOP’s Appendix VI: while four-year program graduation rates in Computer and Information Sciences reached 72.8%, they remain far lower in math-heavy theoretical disciplines like Mathematics & Statistics at 46.4% and Physical Sciences at 34.2%, where early calculus bottlenecks take the heaviest toll.)

3. Curricular Innovation Is Outperforming Traditional “Weed-Out” Calculus

At the September 16 Regents meeting, UCLA integrative biology and physiology professor Eric Deeds presented a compelling alternative to both high-stakes admissions testing and traditional abstract calculus: redesigning how math is taught.

Eight of nine UC campuses now offer discipline-specific calculus pathways. At UCLA, the Life Sciences division created Life Sciences 30A and 30B (Mathematics for Life Scientists), replacing abstract symbol-manipulation tricks with coding (Python), dynamical systems modeling, and real-world biological problems like epidemic spread and ecological feedback loops. UC Santa Cruz recently launched a parallel course (MATH 16A, Mathematics for Life and Environmental Sciences).

According to Figure 9 of the UCOP report, while the systemwide Calculus I DFWNP rate averaged 18% between 2021–22 and 2025–26, DFWNP rates in UCLA’s Life Sciences 30A and UC Santa Cruz’s Math 16A have consistently remained far below the systemwide calculus failure rate.

5. What Happens Next With the SAT, SBAC, and A–G Review?

The September 2026 Regents meeting marked the launch of an expedited, months-long review of UC college readiness and testing policy — but families should not expect an overnight return of the SAT:

  • February 2027: UC’s Board of Admissions and Relations with Schools (BOARS) is scheduled to deliver its formal report and recommendations on standardized testing (evaluating both the SAT/ACT and California’s 11th-grade Smarter Balanced Assessment / SBAC) to the Academic Senate.
  • October 2026 – May 2027: The Board of Regents is conducting a statewide College Readiness Listening Tour (launching at education conferences in Palm Springs, Chula Vista, and San Diego) and reviewing whether the 15-course high school A–G framework still adequately prepares students in the age of AI and post-pandemic grading shifts.
  • June 2027: The Academic Senate is slated to submit final testing and readiness recommendations to the Board of Regents. Even if the Regents vote to reinstate a standardized test or adopt SBAC scores in mid-2027, any new admissions requirement would not take effect until Fall 2028 or Fall 2029 at the earliest.

Meanwhile, the political divide remains sharp. Three California state senators — Roger Niello, Rosilicie Ochoa Bogh, and Steve Choi — wrote to the Regents urging immediate reinstatement of the SAT, while Regent Jay Sures publicly questioned his 2020 vote to eliminate it. On the other side, UC Berkeley law professor Jonathan Glater (co-author of UC’s 2020 testing task force report) and Just Equations Executive Director Pamela Burdman warned the Regents that reinstating the SAT would merely screen out low-income and underrepresented students without fixing K–12 math instruction.

As Regent Lark Park summarized the dilemma: “Some of the data lead me to think we do have a math problem, but I don’t exactly know what it is.”

6. Strategic Playbook: What Applicants and Parents Must Do Now

For high school students applying to the University of California in the 2026–27 or 2027–28 cycles, the combination of EdSource’s campus data and the UCOP report provides an unmistakable strategic roadmap:

  1. Aim to Be in the 41% Who Bypass Introductory Math: The single safest way to insulate yourself from UC’s introductory math bottleneck (and five-course precalculus ladders) is to arrive on campus with verified college-level calculus credit. A score of 4 or 5 on AP Calculus AB or BC, a high score on IB Mathematics HL, or transferable credit from an accredited California Community College calculus course places you directly into advanced coursework where failure rates are less than half the introductory rate.
  2. Don’t Let a High School “A” Fool You: Because 66% of incoming UC freshmen now boast a 4.0+ high school GPA while 17.8% of introductory math takers fail or withdraw, your high school transcript grade is no longer a reliable diagnostic of your UC readiness. Before enrolling at any UC campus, benchmark your algebra, trigonometry, and precalculus fluency under timed, calculator-free conditions (such as the ALEKS math placement diagnostic used by several UC campuses).
  3. Know Your Target Campus’s Math Architecture: If you are a STEM or pre-med applicant without AP Calculus credit, study Appendix III of the UCOP report carefully. Life science and pre-med students at UCLA (LS 30A/30B) and UC Santa Cruz (MATH 16A) benefit from applied modeling sequences with high pass rates. Conversely, students who place into preparatory or precalculus tracks at UC Merced (36.4% DFWNP), UC Riverside (20.5% DFWNP), UC Davis (18.4% DFWNP), or UC San Diego (15.8% DFWNP) face steep weed-out curves and multi-quarter prerequisite chains that can delay major declaration.
  4. Use AP Exam Scores and Dual Enrollment as Your Quantitative Signal in Admissions: While UC remains strictly test-blind for SAT and ACT scores in admissions decisions, UC admissions readers DO see self-reported AP/IB exam scores and dual-enrollment community college grades. In an era where admissions officers know high school math GPAs are inflated, a 5 on AP Calculus BC or an A in community college Multivariable Calculus is the gold standard for proving quantitative readiness.

Sources & Primary Documents

Tags:
#University of California#UC Berkeley#UCLA#SAT#ACT#Testing Policy#STEM#Math#Admissions Data
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