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>“We now observe preparation gaps so severe that instructors must reteach middle-school mathematics while simultaneously teaching the material students need for

• ceejayoz 5mo ago
  Professors who fail large swathes of their classes get in trouble.
  • dmoy 5mo ago
    This sounds like the real underlying problem then
    • ceejayoz 5mo ago
      There are several interrelated problems.
      • conartist6 5mo ago
        A particular historical virus comes to mind
    • Shank 5mo ago
      It's kind of like how if you owe the bank $1000, you have a problem, but if you owe a bank $100M, they have a problem. You just can't reasonably ignore a huge portion of the class as a professor without a serious amount of documentation, and proof that you've tried to escalate and solve the issue. Ultimately, people are paying for these courses, and it's probably better to teach something rather than nothing.
      • 9dev 5mo ago
        Sounds like people are paying for these courses is part of the actual problem, then? Students should not have any kind of entitlement whatsoever to pass classes other than merit.
        • amanaplanacanal 5mo ago
          Well... Maybe. From a customer point of view, they are paying for education. If they aren't getting education that's a problem. From a future employer point of view, they are looking for credentials. But the future employer isn't paying for it. Do we just admit that the purpose of school is to provide credentials, and that's what the students are actually paying for?
          • 9dev 5mo ago
            Framing it as a transaction is part of the problem IMHO. We have a collective interest that the majority of the population gets the best education possible. Turning universities into credential stores leads to all the negative side effects we're dealing with - pay to play schemes, dubious credential mills, rich families bribing universities, and so on.
            • mckn1ght 5mo ago
              You do still actually need the credential process though, in order to demonstrate that a person has in fact received that education.
    • lokar 5mo ago
      They should not admit students who have little chance of success
      • ceejayoz 5mo ago
        Sure, but these students are likely two groups; those who are never going to be good at math, and those who were never really taught math. The latter may need an opportunity to succeed.
        • lokar 5mo ago
          I agree, but they should be admitted into some special program. Like, turn up in July for 3 months of catch-up instruction 4 hrs a day.
          • streptomycin 5mo ago
            That's exactly what they did at my college (non-California state school) 20 years ago. Special program for students from poor high schools who otherwise wouldn't be admitted, where they came in the summer before freshman year and had to pass some prep classes first. IDK what the actual long term results were, but seems like a better idea than nothing.
            • lokar 5mo ago
              If nothing else they could flame out of the pre-freshman classes before wasting too much time and $
        • account42 5mo ago
          At the university level it should be up to the student to ensure that they learn what they need.
          • bmn__ 5mo ago
            Under the circumstance that the primary and secondary education levels have failed to adequately prepare a student for tertiary level, I think your idea would be unfair.
  • john_strinlai 5mo ago
    professors who don't/can't cover their curriculum also get in trouble. if i had to dedicate half of my classes to reteaching things the students are required to know before taking my class, i would not cover what i am supposed to, which then has a knock-on effect to the classes that my class is a prereq for. whenever i have had a larger-than-normal percent of my students failing, i am provided an opportunity to explain it.
    • SpicyLemonZest 5mo ago
      The full letter (https://ucstudentsuccess.org/ https://ucstudentsuccess.org/) gestures towards "growing pressure to dilute quantitative rigor". The strong implication seems to be that some administrators have told some faculty that the failure rates you'd get from holding the line are unacceptable. Presumably they don't want to frame this issue as a faculty vs. administration thing, which makes sense to me.
    • btilly 5mo ago
      When we are put into a catch-22 situation, we should not expect sympathy from the ones who created the catch-22 situation.
      • mckn1ght 5mo ago
        Especially when “It is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends upon his not understanding it." – Upton Sinclair
    • RugnirViking 5mo ago
      > larger-than-normal percent it seems to me this is a ratcheting effect. If a larger than average is discouraged, even implicitly by being called to a meeting, people will target under the average. Repeat this and you'll quickly find the average plummeting
  • 1970-01-01 5mo ago
    That is the entire problem in a nutshell. You cannot reject more than one or two students in a year or the school will reject you.
    • scarmig 5mo ago
      That's a symptom of the problem, not the problem itself. Treating universities as a system, it is deeply problematic and even immoral to saddle students with tens or hundreds of thousands of dollars of debt to enter programs that it is entirely predictable that the student will fail at. The solution is to use all the methods available to predict how successful the student is likely to be after matriculating, not to water down curriculum to the point where the most marginal student in the class will pass.
      • SoftTalker 5mo ago
        But universities need the tuition to support ever more bloated administrative hierarchies and salaries. Most are in a state of abject panic because international graduate enrollments (a cash cow) are way down in the past couple of years. Staff layoffs are starting to happen, which were previously almost unheard of.
      • throw9494krrj 5mo ago
        No, moral is to make student loans subject to regular bankrupcy. Student should be also able to get refound, if university misrepresents or lies about their job prospects! Universities are business as any other!
        • scarmig 5mo ago
          That would be a reform I'd get behind. At the same time, it's still a bad use of funds, and lenders likely wouldn't have the ability to discriminate based on likelihood of bankruptcy or success in an academic program. So it just shifts costs from the student unlikely to succeed to the lender and students likely to succeed.
        • account42 5mo ago
  • AlanYx 5mo ago
    That's presumably why so many professors are banding together for this letter. 600 professors is a fairly significant chunk of the faculty.
  • declan_roberts 5mo ago
    The types of students who are entering college needing dramatic remedial math are not the ones you want to fail in large numbers.
    • radiator 5mo ago
      Sounds somewhat defeatist. Besides, the teacher nevers wants to fail anyone. Teachers would be happy if all students performed well.
      • SoftTalker 5mo ago
        If I may assume, I think GP is alluding to the likelihood that such students are going to be minorities from poor socioeconomic backgrounds. If they are failing in large numbers, that will open the door to claims of systemic discrimination.
  • Ekaros 5mo ago
    Also these are most likely the first classes. You can not block most of your entering cohort. Or even any way significant part. At least in the system these professors exist in. In some other systems like say German where getting in easy and getting rid of some is normal would be different.
    • SoftTalker 5mo ago
      This shouldn't be a hard problem to solve. At the state university I'm most familiar with, every incoming Freshman takes a math assessment test. If they don't pass it, they have to take remedial coursework (which does not count towards their degree requirements). And yes, every student takes it, even the ones with high school AP math and high SAT math scores. The only exception might be if they have already completed and passed actual accredited university math courses for credit.
      • amanaplanacanal 5mo ago
        Even my local community college does it this way, I believe for both math and English.
    • zdragnar 5mo ago
      Do they not have remedial classes for these students? It's been more than 20 years, but back in my day, if you weren't ready for entry level classes (but still got in to university) you took remedial classes first.
      • SpicyLemonZest 5mo ago
        The processes for delivering remedial classes no longer work at the scale required. UC San Diego published a detailed report of what's happening at their campus (https://senate.ucsd.edu/media/740347/sawg-report-on-admissions-review-docs.pdf https://senate.ucsd.edu/media/740347/sawg-report-on-admissio...): their remedial math placement grew from 32 students in 2020 to 921 students in 2025, 665 of whom placed into an extra-remedial course covering grade 1-8 math which had not previously been needed.
  • kzz102 5mo ago
    Tenured professors do often fail large swathes of the class, and it's not hard to stand their ground because academic freedom is still very important in universities. This is not generally true for non-tenured and adjunct professors, but for a different reason -- their job review rely on a large part on student feedback forms, and failing students are not happy students. The idea that if only all professors stood their ground then somehow students will be motivated to study doesn't pan out in practice, though. There is already a significant number of students who are perpetually struggling. They are missing basic prerequisites, and instead of catching up on them, they repeated try and fail at learning the same materials, passing only when they got a lenient instructor. The problem compounds because failing brings helplessness and exacerbates their mental issues, which brings more failing. The university cannot sit on their high ground and watch these students struggle, especially if their number reaches a critical mass.
    • vkou 5mo ago
      The universities can just fail them out and admit people who barely missed the admission bar in their place. Many of them will make it. What's wrong with making universities easier to get into, but harder to stay in?
      • rTX5CMRXIfFG 5mo ago
        Costs the failing students money and mental health issues, which are bad, if you care about those things
        • vkou 5mo ago
          I care about those things but not enough to keep people who can't do the curriculum taking up a university slot.
      • jobs_throwaway 5mo ago
        A lot of hurt feelings. Which to be clear is productive. We treat university students with kid gloves far too much
  • swiftcoder 5mo ago
    This is why universities have offered what amount to remedial math classes for donkey's years. Even in the early 2000's, if you showed up to Calculus I without sufficient preparation, you'd find yourself bounced to Pre-Calculus by the end of the week.
    • thewebguyd 5mo ago
      In 2005 I had to take placement tests before I could even enroll in my classes, so someone who wasn't actually ready for Calculus wouldn't get to enroll in it if they didn't pass the placement tests. It was all part of the admissions process.
    • dmazzoni 5mo ago
      Sure, but it used to be only a small fraction of students, not nearly half the entering class
  • ginko 5mo ago
    When I studied in Austria everyone with a high school diploma would be eligible to matriculate at Vienna University of Technology[1], but then the first semester courses would have a bunch of "knock-out" exams that would have a large chunk of first semester students fail and eventually drop out. IMO this is "fairer" but of course it means you might lose a semester. Helps that there's barely any tuition fees. [1] Even then (~2005) that wasn't the case for all universities though. Medical university already had entrance exams, mainly due to the high number of German students trying to enroll.
  • deleted 5mo ago
    [deleted]
  • ModernMech 5mo ago
    I was hired in my current role to replace one such professor who was fired because he insisted on giving a majority of his class failing grades. And honestly, it was the right call; he was being kind of unprofessional about it. He was teaching a very difficult subject -- C++ -- as an expert, and then getting mad that people weren't also experts at C++ within 3 months. So I agree that professors should have more control and authority over their classes, but also at the same time those professors who fail large swathes of their classes can be really unpleasant.
• simonw 5mo ago
  Have you observed a reduction in the number of students who match those pre-requisites over time?
  • john_strinlai 5mo ago
    i have not tracked it, so this isn't based in data. but, no, i have not noticed any major trends. i dont have any 1st-year courses though, which is where a lot of students are filtered out (for various reasons), so im not in the best position to answer that question.
• malshe 5mo ago
  I agree with you and think this claim needs a lot more evidence. In my university we have been providing remedial math classes for freshman students for a long time. They must pass these before taking regular classes that have math prerequisites.
  • colechristensen 5mo ago
    I had to take a math placement test which was exactly "do you need to take remedial math?" in test form, passing the test was a prereq for a large swath of math/science/engineering classes
    • malshe 5mo ago
      Makes a lot of sense. I can't imagine giving up significant chunk of my regular teaching for offering remedial math!
• deleted 5mo ago
  [deleted]
• fabian2k 5mo ago
  It's a different country and a different time, but when I studied (a natural science) there were dedicated courses at the start for refreshing high school math. Those were optional, and covered relatively simple topics. There was also a real math lecture that went into topics above high school math, but also contained some repetition. All other courses mostly relied on what was contained there. So I would fully agree, but I'd also be a bit surprised if you don't have any dedicated "math for scientists"-like courses to cover the stuff usually needed.
  • john_strinlai 5mo ago
    >So I would fully agree, but I'd also be a bit surprised if you don't have any dedicated "math for scientists"-like courses to cover the stuff usually needed. we do! those are dedicated courses, where it is expected that the students are taking it to catch up (i.e. no prereq) students can also drop a course within the first 4 weeks for no penalty, and retake it in a later semester if they figure out they they are behind and would not perform well.
• delusional 5mo ago
  Because the like teaching and believe in giving their students/customers the best possible education? I get not wanting to waste the time of the better students, but if too many student are behind, whose time are you really wasting?
  • thinkingtoilet 5mo ago
    But it goes both ways. If a student doesn't have the prerequisite knowledge for a class it is absolutely unfair and decidedly not the best possible education to slow the class down for students who are prepared. If a class requires X, and you don't have X, that's a you problem, not a university/teacher problem.
    • delusional 5mo ago
      I don't think it's helpful to be that rigid about it. Both the teacher and the student has an interest in the student learning something. Sometimes we have to give each other a bit of leeway to get to the destination. There's a whole "philosophy of education" discussion I'd like to avoid, but the goal of education isn't really to educate one person to their maximum potential, but rather to educate as many people as well as possible. The individual should sacrifice for the collective. Trying to make it a straight forward linear dependency chain displays a sort of autistic adherence to rigid hierarchy that's really common in software people, but really uncommon everywhere else.
      • thinkingtoilet 5mo ago
        This isn't high school. This is a college, specifically for STEM majors. At what point does this not apply? Can someone take a high level Spanish course without having spoken a word of Spanish and expect the teacher to cater to them? If not, why not?
• jancsika 5mo ago
  > i dont understand why the teachers would go out of their way to reteach middle-school math. "gaps" implies a critical mass of students who require middle-school math reteaching. > i teach. If you've taught for a non-trivial amount of time, you did one of the following with that class: * graded on a curve so you don't fail half the class * failed half the class, and got suspended (pours one out for my compsci professor in college who did that!) Which was it?
  • john_strinlai 5mo ago
    >If you've taught for a non-trivial amount of time, i have >you did one of the following with that class: [...] Which was it? these are not the only two options.
    • mos_basik 5mo ago
      I'm genuinely interested in how you approached that kind of situation, then. (And I'm not the commenter who presented what you're saying was a false dilemma)
  • pas 5mo ago
    (at least in Budapest, many moons ago) highly technical programs had some really infamous classes. but people had a lot of chances to pass the exams. each semester about 3. and it was possible to take the class 3 times (the 3rd required a permission, but it was formality, it was granted almost to everyone) so in the end if someone was unprepared, they had at least a year to get their shit together. (but the exams rarely required real maths mastery, mostly rote memorization of proofs and a few typical problem types with really mechanical solutions.) it's so strange to read about a professor getting suspended for being too strict.
    • gcampos 5mo ago
      I graduated in Brazil almost 2 decades ago and the only places that suspended professors for being too strict were crappy for profit universities, everywhere else professors could fail the whole class if they didn’t meet standards.
• rTX5CMRXIfFG 5mo ago
  What isn’t fair is for schools to take students’ matriculation and set them up for years of debt, apparently without any intention of educating them properly as per your comment. Better for schools to just screen based on standardized test scores
  • john_strinlai 5mo ago
    >without any intention of educating them properly as per your comment. my comment in no way implies that we have don't have an intention of educating our students properly
    • rTX5CMRXIfFG 5mo ago
      I know, but your comment also in no way implies that you are taking into account the bigger picture here, where the criticism is directed at the admissions process, and wherein universities are honestly at fault. If university-level classes have pre-requisites that should be taught in high school, then universities should screen for that and disqualify students who do not have the required competency. They should not be taking the students' money, admit them in the institution, and then let them enroll in classes that they are not prepared to succeed in. That's outright extortion. Many of those students have to take on debt to pay for their education, and besides the financial cost, it's a waste of time, and their failures would be mentally crushing and have lifelong repercussions. I sympathize with educators in that they cannot slow the whole class down, but that's the point: universities shouldn't be putting educators in a position to compromise the teaching. Meanwhile, educators also shouldn't accept that "pointing [students] in the right direction to get caught up" is enough, because objectively speaking, it's not---that is not how a student develops an understanding of maths and sciences. For the student, that requires a focused (and in many cases, guided) study of those subject areas and before university, without the stress of catching up to university-level courses that are already being taken at the same time.
      • john_strinlai 5mo ago
        >I know then why did you accuse me of not intending to educate my students? >Meanwhile, educators also shouldn't accept that "pointing [students] in the right direction to get caught up" is enough, because objectively speaking, it's not---that is not how a student develops an understanding of maths and sciences. you havent bothered to ask what "pointing in the right direction" entails, and are making (wrong) assumptions.
• adrr 5mo ago
  They could just accept the kids who are at or above grade level. There are way more kids at or above grade level who graduate from California high school like my nephew who took AP calc and missed only question on the math of his SAT. He couldn't get into any UC schools and instead had to leave the state for college. We could set up a standardized test for the UC schools ensure that the students being accepted have minimum baseline normalized across all applicants. We could call it scholastic aptitude test or the American College Test.
• spiralcoaster 5mo ago
  Now imagine a significant portion of your students are missing the prerequisites. Do you really think these professors are up in arms about a few students who don't have the prereqs? It obviously must be a large enough proportion to worry about. It's no longer "if a student somehow makes it into my class", it's "many students are currently making it into my class"