You might find the following question on a first-grade math test: “Fill in the box: 7+2=[blank]+6.” But what you wouldn’t expect is for 25 percent of incoming freshman at a highly ranked university to get the question wrong. But they did.

A report released this month by the University of California, San Diego, lays bare the fraud that many public schools are perpetrating on kids, parents and communities at large. They are handing out high grades and diplomas to students who lack even basic math and English language skills.

“Over the past five years, UC San Diego has experienced a steep decline in the academic preparation of its entering first-year students — particularly in mathematics, but also in writing and language skills,” notes the analysis, by the school’s Senate-Administration Workgroup on Admissions. “Between 2020 and 2025, the number of students whose math skills fall below middle-school level increased nearly thirtyfold, reaching roughly one in eight members of the entering cohort.”

The trend “poses serious challenges both to student success and to the university’s instructional mission,” the report warns.

Keep in mind that UC San Diego is among the better public universities in the nation. The school’s acceptance rate for the 2024-25 calendar year was 28 percent, with a high school GPA minimum requirement of 3.0 for California residents and 3.4 for out-of-state students.

Yet the report finds that 12.5 percent of incoming students are incapable of passing a middle-school math test. Many of these students are also deficient in English language skills. The report found that 40 percent of those who lacked proficiency in math also required remedial writing instruction.

Nevada is no stranger to this type of grade deception. In 2014, 45.6 percent of state high school graduates who received a Millennium Scholarship — supposedly the best and brightest — needed remedial education when they began college at a Nevada campus.

UC San Diego officials blame the pandemic, the elimination of standardized testing and other admission requirements for the problem. In other words, California’s decision to stop using the ACT or SAT as a measuring stick is self-defeating.

But the larger problem is a K-12 quasi-monopoly — in California, Nevada and elsewhere — dominated by politically powerful union interests who would rank academic outcomes near the bottom of their list of priorities. The inevitable results are students automatically passed along regardless of their progress, inflated grades that fool parents and kids, and high school diplomas devoid of value.

This works well for the adults entrenched in this deception and the politicians who abet them. For colleges and employers left to clean up the mess — and the young adults failed by it — not so much.

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