When Universities Stop Measuring Readiness, Students Pay the Price
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A group of professors in California has had enough. They are watching a growing number of students arrive at university with mathematics skills below the level expected for their studies, with many in that group performing below middle-school level, and they are saying so publicly. Their open letter, signed by mathematics and Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics (STEM) faculty at the University of California (UC), calls for an urgent fix. But the problem they describe is not unique to California. It is playing out in South Africa too, and the stakes for our economy are just as high.
What the Letter Says
Their central demand is clear: bring back the SAT/ACT mathematics requirement for students applying to STEM degrees, starting with the 2027 admissions cycle. The SAT (Scholastic Assessment Test) and ACT (American College Testing) are standardised tests used in the United States to assess whether school leavers are ready for university study. The UC system dropped these tests in 2020. The faculty argue that the consequences have been severe.
The Numbers Are Alarming
The professors are not speaking in generalities. They cite a formal investigation, the UC San Diego Senate-Administration Workgroup on Admissions report, which found the following:
In the last five years, the number of incoming students whose mathematics skills fall below high school level increased nearly thirtyfold.
Of those students, 70% are working at below middle school level.
That group now makes up roughly one in every twelve first-year students.
At UC Berkeley, one of the most prestigious public universities in the world, between 20% and 30% of first-semester calculus students showed serious preparation gaps, for three years in a row. The letter describes what this means in practice. Professors are having to reteach middle school content while simultaneously trying to cover university-level material. The result is a classroom split between students who are ready and students who are not, and both groups suffer.
Why Dropping the Tests Created This Problem
The faculty make a pointed argument. The faculty argue that, after the SAT/ACT was removed, admissions relied primarily on GPA and application essays. Both of those, they say, have become unreliable.
Grade inflation, meaning the tendency for school marks to rise over time without a corresponding rise in actual ability, means that a good matric-style grade no longer tells you what it used to. And with the rise of artificial intelligence tools, application essays are increasingly difficult to trust as a reflection of a student's actual thinking.
The SAT/ACT mathematics test was not designed to identify genius. It was designed as a basic common check, a minimum standard that every student should meet before stepping into university-level STEM work. Without it, that check disappears.
The 2020 Academic Senate Standardised Testing Task Force (STTF) actually warned that this would happen. Its report predicted that removing the tests would eliminate a key predictor of university success and hide the impact of grade inflation. Those warnings were ignored, and the data now confirms they were correct.
This Is Not an Anti-Equity Argument
The letter directly addresses the concern that requiring standardised tests is unfair to students from poorer or under-resourced backgrounds. The professors disagree, and they make a compelling case.
Their argument is this: if you do not measure whether a student is ready for university-level STEM, you do not remove the barrier. You just move it into the classroom, where it is much harder to overcome. A student who struggles with fractions sitting in a first-year calculus class is not being helped. They are being set up to fail.
Genuine access, the letter argues, requires honest information. The question is not whether to measure readiness, but where the best place is for a student to build that readiness before taking on degree-level work. California's public education system includes community colleges and other institutions designed exactly for that purpose.
What They Are Asking For
The four demands in the letter are practical and specific:
1. Reinstate SAT/ACT mathematics scores for applicants to STEM-intensive degrees, from 2027.
2. Use those scores as a baseline readiness check, to provide a counterweight to inflated school grades.
3. Give STEM faculty oversight of the readiness standards and admissions policies that affect their programmes.
4. Require the university to track outcomes and revise admissions criteria if they fail to predict whether students succeed.
Why This Matters in South Africa
South Africa does not use the SAT or ACT. University admission here is based on the National Senior Certificate (NSC), commonly known as the matric exam, and an Admission Point Score (APS). The APS is a number calculated from a student's best six matric subject results, converted into points. Each university sets its own minimum APS requirement per programme.
For STEM and commerce degrees, most South African universities require a minimum mark in pure Mathematics as a separate subject requirement on top of the APS. This is where a uniquely South African problem comes into view.
Pure Mathematics Versus Mathematical Literacy: A Fork in the Road
South African high school learners face a choice that learners in most other countries do not. From Grade 10, they must choose between two very different mathematics subjects:
Pure Mathematics covers algebra, calculus, geometry, and trigonometry. It is the gateway to STEM and commerce degrees, and it is genuinely difficult.
Mathematical Literacy covers practical numeracy skills, such as reading graphs, working with budgets, and interpreting statistics. It is valuable, but the two subjects are not interchangeable. A student who passed Mathematical Literacy cannot use that result to meet the mathematics entry requirement for a BCom Accounting, Engineering, or Science degree. They are, for practical purposes, on a different track.
This distinction matters enormously when you look at the 2025 matric results. Of the more than 900,000 matric candidates in the Class of 2025, only 34% wrote pure Mathematics. The other 66% wrote Mathematical Literacy. The Basic Education Minister, Siviwe Gwarube, described this split as a serious concern. The Department of Basic Education flagged the migration of learners away from Mathematics as one of the most pressing issues in the results.
In other words, before we even get to questions of pass rates and university readiness, two thirds of South Africa's school leavers have already exited the pipeline for STEM and most commerce degrees.
On paper, this seems like a reasonable system. The problem is that it faces the same pressure the UC faculty are describing in California.
South Africa's matric pass rate hit a record high in 2025 which sounds like progress. But critics are asking harder questions about what that number means, and rightly so. The 2025 results shows that among those who did write pure Mathematics, the pass rate has dropped and the number of distinctions was nearly halved. The Department of Basic Education acknowledged the concern, stating that STEM subjects must be prioritised and that a focused strategy is needed.
There is also a well-documented gap between schools with resources and those without. Well-resourced private and semi-private schools consistently produce higher pure Mathematics results. Students from no-fee schools, who make up most of the university-entering cohort, face a different reality. In 2025, 464 public schools did not offer pure Mathematics at all (source: Daily Maverick).
South Africa is also falling significantly short of its own targets. The National Development Plan (NDP), the government's long-term development framework, set a target of 350,000 mathematics passes by 2030. In 2024, there were only 256,000 entries for the subject. At current trends, the country will not get close to that target.
The Mathematical Literacy option was introduced with good intentions. It was designed to give learners who would not pursue STEM careers a practical, relevant mathematics experience. The problem is that evidence suggests some schools push weaker learners towards Mathematical Literacy not because it is the right fit, but to protect the school's headline pass rate. Researchers have described this as schools "gaming" the system, steering students away from pure Mathematics to avoid pulling down overall statistics.
The result is a pattern that mirrors what the UC faculty are describing. Many universities report that some students who meet the formal admission requirements nevertheless require significant academic support in mathematics. Foundation programmes, extended curricula, and academic support units are absorbing some of that gap. But university resources are not unlimited, and not every institution has the capacity to bridge a gap that researchers say begins as early as Grade 1.
What South African Institutions Are Doing About It
Some universities already use supplementary testing. The National Benchmark Test (NBT) is used by a number of South African universities to assess academic readiness. Whether it is compulsory depends on the institution and programme. The NBT includes a Mathematics test for students applying to commerce, pharmacy, and science programmes.
But the NBT is not compulsory across the system, and not all universities use it equally. The UC faculty's argument, that you need a common external measure applied consistently, applies here too.
For accounting and finance students in particular, the mathematics gap is not abstract. Foundational numeracy is the bedrock of every qualification, from a Chartered Bookkeeper (CBK) working with payroll to a Chartered Chief Financial Officer (CCFO) advising on corporate strategy. If the pipeline of numerically ready graduates narrows, the profession feels it.
The Practical Takeaway
The debate in California is a useful mirror for South Africa. The question is not whether to hold students to a standard. It is whether the systems used to teach learners and measure readiness before university entry are doing their job.
For South African accounting professionals, especially those who work with graduates or who advise on education and skills development, this is worth watching closely. The quality of the talent entering the profession depends on decisions being made right now in schools, in examination boards, and in university admissions offices.
Measuring readiness is not an obstacle to opportunity. It is the first step in making sure that opportunity is real.