Some of the freshmen arriving in Mina Aganagic’s UC Berkeley math classes cannot do basic multiplication, a skill the state expects of third graders.
Aganagic is one of thousands of UC faculty members who signed a pair of open letters this spring demanding the university reinstate standardized testing in admissions — a practice that UC dropped in 2020 and that peer institutions, including MIT, Stanford, Harvard and Yale, have brought back.
After more than two decades teaching undergraduates, Aganagic says high school graduates admitted to study science and engineering at one of the world’s most rigorous schools are showing up with “no mathematical infrastructure built at all.”…