Other UCs are tracking similar trends, but UC San Diego’s problem is “significantly worse,” the report states.
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The number of first-year students at the University of California, San Diego, whose math skills fall below a middle school level has increased nearly 30-fold over the past five years, according to a new report from the university’s Senate–Administration Working Group on Admissions. In the 2025 fall cohort, one in eight students placed into math below a middle school level, despite having a solid math GPA.
The number of first-year students in remedial math courses at the university surged to 390 in fall 2022, up from 32 students in fall 2020. The remedial math course was designed in 2016 and only addressed missing high school math knowledge, but instructors quickly realized that many of their students had knowledge gaps that went back to middle or elementary school, the report states. For fall 2024, UC San Diego revamped its remedial math course to address middle school math gaps and introduced an additional remedial course to cover high school math. In fall 2025, 921 students enrolled in one of these two courses—11.8 percent of the incoming class.
“This deterioration coincided with the COVID-19 pandemic and its effects on education, the elimination of standardized testing, grade inflation, and the expansion of admissions from under-resourced high schools,” the report states. “The combination of these factors has produced an incoming class increasingly unprepared for the quantitative and analytical rigor expected at UC San Diego.”
Within the UCsystem, the San Diego campus isn’t alone, but its problem is “significantly worse,” the report states. This is partly because the university has, since 2022, admitted and enrolled more students from low-income schools that saw greater COVID-era learning loss than other UC campuses. Many other UC campuses are seeing similar, though smaller, declines in student preparation. About half of UC campus math chairs responded to a survey saying that the “number of first-year students that are unable to start in college-level precalculus” increased twofold between fall 2020 and fall 2025, and the other half said the number increased threefold.
High school grade inflation is not helping the university evaluate students’ math skills, the report states. In 2024, the average high school math GPA for students in Math 2, the middle school–level remedial math course, was 3.65—an A-minus.
“At the same time our admit pool is slipping in math preparation, we see a slight improvement in their math grades from high school,” the report states. “The elimination of standardized testing together with COVID resulted in a mismatch between students’ course level/grades and their actual levels of preparation, with far-reaching implications for determining math readiness and course placement.”
The working group put forward a number of recommendations for addressing these shortcomings, including using a “math index” based on historical placement data and transcript-based variables to “predict students’ likelihood of placement into remedial math.” The group also recommended establishing feedback mechanisms with high schools and requiring math placement testing by June 1 for incoming students, among other things.
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Almost 20 years ago a San Diego nonprofit created a preschool to focus on the “little guys” — children who experience domestic violence and other serious traumatic events before kindergarten.
Mi Escuelita provides services for kids in a single location that for most other families would require intricate coordination among multiple health care providers, educators and social programs.
The children learn in a classroom that is always staffed with at least one therapist, they participate in one-on-one therapy, and join group therapy sessions. Their parents take part in special classes, too, where they learn ways to support their children.
Researchers from UC San Diego have paid close attention to Mi Escuelita and followed how its graduates fared after leaving the preschool. The university also works with the school to evaluate outcomes from each cohort of students. Here are four takeaways from those reports.
The kids leave ready for kindergarten
Students who graduate from Mi Escuelia outperform or do at least well as their peers in kindergarten, according to a UC San Diego analysis of their scores in reading and math tests.
It looked at kindergarten students in the Chula Vista Elementary School District from 2007 to 2013 and found a higher percentage of Mi Escuelita met math, reading and writing standards than the district’s general population.
That’s not a given because research shows that children exposed to domestic violence have lower verbal ability than their peers, which can set them back in school.
And they do well for years
The length of UC San Diego’s study allowed its team to follow Mi Escuelita graduates through fifth grade. The results suggested that their preschool experience helped the kids throughout their childhoods.
Their average scores on several standardized tests exceeded those of the general population at Chula Vista Elementary School District, especially in math.
“Taken together, the Mi Escuelita program demonstrates clear benefits to children who may otherwise fall quickly and unsparingly behind with regard to school readiness,” the UC San Diego researchers wrote.
Better relationships at home
Some families turn to Mi Escuelita in moments of distress, such as after experiencing domestic violence. The preschool provides counseling for parents and students alike, which may contribute to behavioral improvements at home.
Over the past five years, 64% of the families in the program reported sensing fewer conflicts and 83% of them noticed an increase in closeness.
“Families reported that children’s communication, behavior, and listening skills improved both at home and at school,” a UC San Diego team wrote in an evaluation of student and parent surveys that spanned 2020 to 2024.
It takes a village
Running Mi Escuelita costs about $1.3 million a year, a sum that nonprofit South Bay Community Services raises through a mix of donations and government funding. That cost — along with the challenge of hiring trained educators and therapists — makes the program difficult to replicate.
But, other schools and government agencies are watching Mi Escuelita to see what kind of services they can carry over to other venues.
“We can spend less later on intervention programs and alternative facilities,” said Hilaria Bauer, chief early learning services officer at Kidango, a Bay Area nonprofit childcare provider. “There will be less truancy, less big behaviors or expulsions or alternative programs, and all of those ‘fix’ initiatives if we really focus on the time in the life of a child that really makes a change.”
While generative artificial intelligence tools have proliferated in education and workplace settings, not all tools are free or accessible to students and staff, which can create equity gaps regarding who is able to participate and learn new skills. To address this gap, San Diego State University leaders created an equitable AI alliance in partnership with the University of California, San Diego, and the San Diego Community College District. Together, the institutions work to address affordability and accessibility concerns for AI solutions, as well as share best practices, resources and expertise.
In the latest episode of Voices of Student Success, host Ashley Mowreader speaks with James Frazee, San Diego State University’s chief information officer, about the alliance and SDSU’s approach to teaching AI skills to students.
An edited version of the podcast appears below.
Q: Can you give us the high-level overview: What is the Equitable AI Alliance? What does it mean to be equitable in AI spaces?
James Frazee, chief information officer at San Diego State University
A: Our goal is simple but ambitious: to make AI literacy and access available as opportunities to all of our students, and I mean every student, whether they started at a community college, a California State University like ours or at a University of California school. We want to make sure they all have that same foundation to understand and apply AI responsibly in their lives, in their careers and during their academic journey.
Through this alliance, we’re trying to align resources and expand access to institutionally supported AI tools. So when people are using the free tools, they’re not free, right? They’re paying for them with their privacy, with their intellectual property. We want to make sure that they have access, not only to the training they need to use these tools responsibly, but also to the high-quality tools that are more accurate and that have commercial data protection so that they can rest assured that their intellectual property isn’t being used to train the underlying large language models.
Q: The alliance strives to work across institutions, which is atypical in many cases in higher ed. Can you talk about that partnership and why this is important for your students?
A: The Equitable AI Alliance emerged from survey results. We have this listening infrastructure we’ve created here at San Diego State—we launched an AI survey in 2023, within months of ChatGPT going public. We really wanted to establish a baseline and determine what tools our students were using, what opinions did they have about AI and maybe, most importantly, what did they expect from us institutionally in order to help them meet the moment?
During the analysis of those survey findings, we discovered evidence of a growing digital divide. For instance, we asked students about how many devices they had. If you have a smartphone, a tablet, a desktop and a laptop, you would have four smart devices.
What we found was more devices led to people being more likely to say that AI had positively affected their education, and more devices meant that they were more likely to be paying for the paid versions of these tools. We also saw in the open-ended responses … people being concerned about fee increases as a result of AI, people being concerned about students who didn’t have access to these tools or fluency with these tools being disadvantaged.
People were saying, “The people who are using these have an unfair advantage,” right? Students were asking questions about, is everybody going to be able to afford what they need in order to keep up with AI? So that really was a key driver in forming this alliance.
Q: When it comes to consolidating those resources or making sure that students have access, what does that look like? And how do you all share?
A: The Equitable AI Alliance is really two things. First, it’s a consortium that’s all about saving time and saving money and having universities and colleges come together to really look at ways to form these partnerships to democratize access to these high-quality tools. And also to provide the training that people need. So that’s kind of the first part of it, and that’s much larger than the regional consortium.
But we have a regional consortium between our San Diego Community College District, San Diego State University and the University of California at San Diego, which is also dubbed the Equitable AI Alliance. And the mission there is to ensure that every student, no matter where they begin their journey, has access to AI literacy, to those high-quality tools and opportunities to leverage those to help them succeed, both inside and outside of the classroom.
It’s really, ultimately about responding to the workforce needs that we’re seeing. Employers today are demanding students come to them with fluency using these tools, and if they don’t have that fluency, they’re not going to get that internship or that job interview. So it’s really important. That’s where those microcredentials that we’re sharing across our institutions are really powerful, because they can put that badge on their LinkedIn profile, which may make the difference between them getting the interview or not, just having that little artifact there that demonstrates that they have some skills and knowledge can really make an impact.
Q: What is the microcredential? How are students engaging with that?
A: The microcredentials themselves are really powerful because they’re basically mini courses in our learning management system. We try and make them bite-size enough to where people actually get through them.
There are five modules. The first module is really kind of demystifying AI—this is not some dark art. We try to explain, at a high level, how does AI work?
The second module, which is arguably the most important one, is all about responsible use. The fact that these models are built on information from human beings, which is inherently biased. How to be critical consumers of that information, the environmental costs, the human costs, talking about how to cite the use of these tools in your work, both academically and professionally.
Then there’s a module on what AI can do for you. And so we have different microcredentials, a microcredential for faculty, there’s microcredentials for students. For instance, in the microcredential for students, it’s focusing on using AI to find jobs, prepare for jobs, tailor your résumé for a particular job or internship, how to do role-playing—to practice for an interview, let’s say.
And then there’s finding apps, finding generative AI tools, how to do that, because there’s different AI tools you might want to use for certain things, like maybe you want to create some sort of graphic—you might want to use Midjourney or DALL-E, or whatever it might be.
And then there’s the activities. Part of the idea with the activities, which they have to do in order to earn the badge, is that we’re designing activities that try and keep the microcredential evergreen. So for instance, when we first rolled out the microcredential, nobody had heard of DeepSeek, because it didn’t exist. So now we have an activity that has people going out and looking for the latest large language models that are emerging. Every day, there’s some new model, it seems—that is something to be aware of.
And then bringing it back to again, why it’s important for them to be able to be in the loop, pointing out the fact that these models are often very sycophantic, right? They want to tell you what they think you want to hear. And so you really have to go back and forth and ideate with the tools, which requires a little practice, a little coaching, and you have to fact-check everything. And so that’s a really big part of this idea of, what does it mean to be literate when it comes to using these tools?
Q: When it came to developing the microcredential, who were the stakeholders at the table?
A: We have a long history of engaging with faculty and providing fellowships to faculty. That’s a way for us to incentivize engagement with faculty.
That manifests itself in the form of course release. So, in other words, we provide them with reassigned time, buy them out of teaching a course, so that they can come and work with us and consult with us. We have a long history of doing that, and this goes back decades, first helping us with faculty development around moving courses online.
We wanted that to be done by faculty for faculty. Yes, we have instructional designers who are staff, but we really wanted the faculty to be driving that. We identified in 2023 our first AI faculty fellows, and we got a faculty member from information systems and a faculty member from anthropology—very different in terms of their skill sets and their orientation to research. One a qualitative ethnographic researcher, another more of a quantitative machine learning focus. Very complementary in terms of just balancing each other out.
Twenty twenty-three was the first time we had ever provided fellowships to students. We provided fellowships to two students. One was an engineering student and another was an Africana studies student. Again, very different in terms of the academic domain and the discipline they were in, but again, very balanced.
So those two AI student fellows and the two AI faculty fellows helped us design the survey instrument, get the IRB [institutional review board] approvals, launch the survey, promote the survey. I really want to give credit where credit is due: We got an incredible response rate. We’re lucky if we usually get like a 3 percent response rate from a student survey. We got a 21 percent response rate in 2023; 7,811 students responded to that survey.
The credit for that goes to Associated Students, our student government. The president of Associated Students that year ran on a platform of getting students high-paying jobs, and he knew for students to get high-paying jobs, they needed to be conversant with AI. So he helped us promote that survey, and the whole campaign was around “your voice matters.” So thanks to his help and the help of these AI student fellows, we got this incredible response from our students.
So anyway, the students and the faculty fellows helped us analyze those results and then use that data to build these microcredentials. So very much involving faculty and students and our University Senate, our library. I mean, the library knows a thing or two about information literacy, right? They absolutely have to be at the table. Our Center for Teaching and Learning, which is responsible for providing faculty with professional development on campus, they were also very involved from the very outset, so very much of a collaborative effort.
Q: I wanted to ask about culture and creating a campus culture that embraces AI. How are you all thinking about engaging stakeholders in these hard conversations and bringing different disciplines to the playing field?
A: I think it’s really important. That’s what the data has done for us. It’s really created space for these conversations, because faculty will respond to evidence. If you have data that is from their students, who they care about deeply, that creates space for these conversations.
For instance, one of the things that emerged from the survey findings was inconsistency. In the same course, maybe taught by different instructors, there would be different expectations and policies with regard to AI.
In multiple sections of Psychology 101—and that’s not a real example, I’m just using that as a fictitious example—one instructor might completely forbid the use of AI and another one might require it, and that’s stressful for students because they didn’t know what to expect.
In fact, one of the comments that really resonated with me from the survey was, and this is a verbatim quote, “Just tell us what you expect and be clear about it.” Students were getting mixed messages.
So that led to conversations with our University Senate about the need to be clear with our students. I’m happy to report, just this past May, our University Senate unanimously passed a policy that requires an AI … statement in every syllabus. That was an important step in the right direction.
The University Senate also created guidelines for the use of generative AI in assessments and deliverables. You know, it’s important that you not be prescriptive with your faculty. You need to provide them with lots of examples of language that they can use or tweak, because they own the curriculum, and knowing that you don’t have to take a one-size-fits-all approach.
Maybe one assignment, it’s restricted; in another assignment, it’s unrestricted, right? You can do that. And they’re like, “Oh yeah, I can do that.” Giving them examples of language they can use, and also encouraging them to use this as an opportunity to have a conversation with their students.
The students want more direction on how to use these tools appropriately. And I think if you race to a policy that’s all about academic misconduct, it’s frankly insulting to the students, to just assume everybody’s cheating, and then when they leave here and go into their place of business, they’re going to be expected to use these tools. So, really powerful conversations.
That’s been key here—just talking about [AI]. I mean, it’s this seismic kind of epistemic shift for our faculty and how knowledge is created, how we acquire knowledge, how we represent knowledge, how we assess knowledge. It’s a stressful time for our faculty—they need to be able to process that with other faculty, and that’s super important.
Q: It’s also important that you’re having that conversation collegewide, because if this is a career competency and students do need AI skills, it needs to happen in every classroom, or at least be addressed in every classroom.
A: That’s a really good point, Ashley. In fact, we’re launching a program this year that we’re calling the AI-ready course design workshop, and the idea for that is that we’re identifying a faculty member from every major and we are paying them—and this is super important, too: It’s really a sign of respect, in terms of acknowledging the labor required to reimagine an assignment, to weave AI into the fabric of that assignment.
The goal is to have a faculty member from every major who teaches a required course in that major at least two times. We want to make sure that they have an opportunity to do this and then refine it and do it again. They’re being paid over break this winter to reimagine an assignment that leverages AI, and it is a deliverable. They will produce a three- to five-minute introspective video where they reflect on what they did, why they did it and what were the learning outcomes, both for them and for their students.
That is great because we will have an example from every major of how you can use AI in the fabric of your teaching. And I think that’s what faculty need right now. Again, they need lots of examples, and we’re incentivizing that through this program. We already have something we call the “AI in action” video series, so we already have some examples, but we don’t have examples from every major.
For us right now, I think you’re seeing a lot of engagement from faculty in engineering and sciences. We’re concerned that our humanities faculty need to engage; we need to engage the political scientists. We need to engage the philosophers and the historians. They can’t just sit this out. They’re really going to be key players in moving this forward, to prepare our students, regardless of major, for this AI-augmented world that we’re living in.
Q: What are some of the lessons that you’ve learned that you hope higher education can learn from? How do you all hope to be a model to your peers across the sector?
A: I think key is the importance of data and using data to inform the choices you’re making, whether it’s in the classroom, whether it’s in the cabinet. I report to the president, and using data to really drive those conversations, and using that to make sure that you’re engaging all of those stakeholders.
For instance, we’re looking at the survey data. That survey that we did in 2023 and repeated in 2024, we’ve now scaled up to the entire California State University system, and that is underway right now. In fact, I was just looking at the latest response rates. We have had, as of this morning, 77,714 people responding to the survey … which is about a 15 percent response rate. We’ve got half a million students in the CSU, so it’s a big number.
I was looking at [the data] with the council of vice presidents and my colleague … the provost, and I said, “When you look at the numbers for San Diego State, we’ve had 10,682 responses from students. We’ve had 406 responses from faculty and 556 responses from staff. But relative to the students, the response rate from faculty is pretty low.” So I talked with [the provost] about sending a message out to our academic leaders—the deans and the department chairs and the school directors—encouraging their faculty to respond to the survey, so that we have a balanced perspective.
Everybody has a voice. That is certainly something that I want to encourage; this whole idea of incentivizing faculty engagement, I think, is important. I think you really need to provide that encouragement for faculty to experiment, to show off, and then to really use that as an opportunity to recognize those faculty and celebrate them. That does a couple things. One, it honors them for taking the risk to do this work. Then it might inspire another faculty [member] to build on that work, or have coffee with that person and talk about what they wish they would have known that they could advise this person on who maybe is early career and would appreciate their advice. I think that idea of incentivizing faculty engagement is another thing that I would encourage the audience to consider.
Q: What’s next for you all? Are there other cool interventions or programs that are coming out?
A: That survey data is going to do quite a few things for us. It’s going to help us to not only refine the microcredentials and the work we’re doing with the microcredentials, but it’s also going to allow us to scaffold conversations with industry and our industry partners in terms of being responsive to the competencies they’re going to need in their industry.
I think it’s something like 35 out of the top 50 AI companies are housed here in California, but they can’t find the talent they need in California, let alone the United States, so they’re having to go abroad to get the people they need to continue to innovate. So using this as an opportunity to work with our industry partners to make sure we’re preparing this workforce that they need to continue to innovate, that’s a key element of it, and then using this data also to help us get additional resources and use that data to say, “Hey, here’s a gap we’ve identified. We need to fill this gap,” and using that data to make the case for that investment.
A Vanderbilt spokesperson confirmed to the Chronicle that the university—which is based in Nashville, Tenn., but also has satellite campuses in New York City and West Palm Beach, Fla.—has been working with the San Francisco mayor’s office on a plan to gain a foothold in the Bay Area.
“Vanderbilt is always exploring new opportunities to expand our impact and further our mission,” the spokesperson told the newspaper. “We recognize the long-term global leadership of San Francisco and its ever-growing potential, defined by a vibrant culture, dynamic innovation ecosystem and the talent drawn to its leading technology companies and top-caliber arts and cultural institutions.”
The spokesperson added that the institution’s aim is “to create unique student experiences, fuel pathbreaking research and foster close connections to the ideas and companies that will lead the next generation of the nation’s economy.”
San Francisco mayor Daniel Lurie has expressed interest in partnering with a university to revitalize the city.
“Our administration is working every day to create a clean, safe and thriving downtown—one that draws people, businesses and investments back to our city,” Lurie told the Chronicle. “As I said during my campaign, welcoming a world-class university like Vanderbilt to our city would bring new energy and foot traffic downtown, and we will continue working to make that happen.”
A source told the Chronicle that the mayor has approached a handful of other universities, but the arrangement with Vanderbilt appears to be the “most promising”; city officials have met with university leaders multiple times.
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By 2:45 p.m. the regular school day at August Boeger Middle School had already ended, but one class is about to start. More than 20 eighth graders drop their backpacks and settle into desks — not for extra credit but for college credit.
These 13- and 14-year-old students in East San Jose are taking their first college course, an entry-level class on career planning. This middle school is one of the first in the state to offer a college-level course. In the coming years, the San Jose Evergreen Community College District wants all middle school students in this school district to be able to complete three college courses before they start high school, and soon, the district plans to offer other courses, such as sociology and ethnic studies, said Beatriz Chaidez, the chancellor for the community college district.
Middle schoolers have long been eligible to enroll in college classes in California, though only a few, high-achieving students actually do it. By offering a college class at a middle school — especially one in a high-poverty area — the community college district is looking to make that enrollment easier. The class is taught by a middle school staff member, and it’s reserved exclusively for middle school students.
But with so few programs, there is little research about whether students are benefitting, and the local faculty union is worried middle school students might not be ready.
Chaidez disagrees. “Navigating (college) as early as middle school is unheard of in their community,” she said. “So when they experience success, it really motivates them to continue.”
California is increasingly pushing high schools to offer community college classes directly to students during the regular school day, a set-up known as “dual enrollment.” Unlike AP classes, which include expensive exams and are limited to certain subjects and high-performing students, these community college classes cover a range of topics and are open to all students. By 2030, California Community Colleges Chancellor Sonya Chiristian wants all high school students to graduate with at least four college courses completed.
Chaidez wants to go further. She wants every local high school student to be able to complete about 20 college courses by the time they graduate — enough to earn an associate’s degree.
CalMatters reached out to the college district’s faculty union, which was surprised to learn the district is offering classes at a middle school.
“This opens up some problems,” said Jessica Breheny, an English professor and the union’s vice president. “I’m sure there are 12-year-olds that are college-ready, but there are just less of them and it’s less likely. Developmentally, they have other things going on.”
Research shows that high schoolers who take college classes are more likely to attend college and graduate, but there’s little research on how middle school students fare, said John Fink, a senior researcher at Columbia University’s Community College Research Center. “Nationally, and in most states, this is very, very rare, and in many states this is not allowed.” Instead, he said the focus is typically on enrolling more 10th, 11th and 12th graders in college courses.
A college-level course, with a few middle school games
About 10% of California’s high school students took a community college class in the 2021-22 school year, according to an analysis by professors at UC Davis using the most recent data. California’s community college system doesn’t track how many middle school students take college courses.
So far, the Mount Pleasant Elementary School District, which includes August Boeger Middle School, offers only one college course, called “Career Planning,” and it’s almost indistinguishable from any other class on its campus. The college course is taught in a regular middle school classroom, and the professor, Oscar Lamas, already works at the middle school, where he’s a counselor. Perhaps the only noticeable difference is the timing: The middle school day ends at 2:30 p.m. and Lamas’ course starts at 2:45. He’s paid separately by the community college to teach the course.
Career Planning helps students learn about career paths, practice resume-writing and learn psychological theories related to professional success. A governing board of college district professors, known as the Academic Senate, sets the objectives for each college course, but Lamas has broad discretion in teaching it. The Academic Senate responsible for setting the parameters of Lamas’ course did not respond to multiple requests for comment.
The dean of the community college’s counseling department, Victor Garza, refused an interview request from CalMatters but issued a written statement. Garza said the middle school class is akin to other dual enrollment courses, which maintain the college’s “academic rigor.”
“Some adjustments might be needed to cater to the unique needs and experiences” of students, he added.
On a Thursday before spring break, Lamas tries to make his class more fun by breaking the students into five teams to play a Jeopardy-style quiz game on the topic of the day, Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs.
Natalie Mendoza, 14, becomes the default spokesperson of her team, named the “Tacos R Us Club,” but she answers the first question wrong, putting her team back 300 points and prompting her classmates to burst into chatter and analyze their mistakes.
As part of the class, she has to study a career, write a short essay about it and present it at a career fair. She picked intellectual property law. “A lot of people say I’m assertive,” she said. “I think that’s a really good trait for a lawyer, and I think it’d be fun to fight for people who have created stuff.”
Natalie said she’d be the first in her family to attend college but she’s already planning to go and has a few schools in mind, including UC Berkeley and San Jose State. If she does attend one of those schools, her grade in this counseling class would be part of her official college transcript.
Breheny, with the union, said she’s concerned about the quality of the classes, especially once the college district begins teaching other subjects, such as ethnic studies.
“Faculty designed their courses for adult learners,” Breheny said. An ethnic studies class may cover topics such as sexual violence and genocide, she added — topics that may be difficult to convey to a middle schooler. “Some of the material assumes a certain knowledge about the world, about politics, which you may not have at 11, 12, 13 years old.”
High schools offer few dual enrollment classes
August Boeger Middle School sits at the base of the Diablo Range mountains, tucked between the ranch-style homes and strip malls that color East San Jose. Teachers and staff greet each other with mucho gusto instead of hello. All around the open-air campus, murals tell the story of the region’s multi-cultural heritage, especially its Mexican and Chicano roots.
That celebration of culture is a direct response to a history of adversity, Lamas said. “East San Jose has always been a marginalized, disadvantaged environment.” As a result, schools in the community contend with education disparities, he said, such as a high dropout rate and a high teen pregnancy rate.
Offering a college class to these middle school students allows them to “see a possibility for their future that doesn’t exist within these walls here” and can inspire them to reach for a higher goal, said Marisa Peña, a school advisor.
Male students, Black and Latino students and students from rural areas are underrepresented in the community college courses offered at California’s school districts. California lawmakers have signed numerous bills in the hopes of expanding access but certain regions in the state, such as Los Angeles, enroll a higher percentage of students.
Natalie said she hopes to continue taking college courses when she starts at Mount Pleasant High School this fall, which is just around the corner from her middle school. But her options are limited.
Mount Pleasant High School offers just three community college courses, which serve about 10% of the school’s roughly 1,000 students, said Kyle Kleckner, the school district’s director of instructional services. All of the classes are in “multimedia” studies, he said, which teaches students how to create their own podcasts or YouTube channels, along with other digital marketing skills.
Although Mount Pleasant High School’s dual enrollment is about on par with the state average, it trails other districts in the region. Less than 20 miles away, at high schools in the Milpitas Unified School District, roughly 25% of students enrolled in a community college class in 2021-22, according to the UC Davis analysis.
Finding professors to teach middle school
Part of the dual enrollment challenge is finding qualified college professors who are willing and able to work at a high school or middle school. Existing middle and high school teachers are allowed to teach college courses but they have to meet the qualifications, which usually include a master’s degree in the area of instruction. Most of California’s high school and middle school instructors lack a master’s degree, according to a study by the Public Policy Institute of California.
“We have graduation requirements that students have to accomplish,” Kleckner said. “The trick is finding that community college course that also fulfills those requirements and also finding a teacher who can teach it.” He said Mount Pleasant High School is committed to expanding the number of college courses but noted that it’s smaller and therefore has fewer teachers who meet the requirements to teach a college course.
In turn, many college professors lack experience teaching children, said Breheny, who teaches at San Jose City College. “We have had some problems already with dual enrollment where faculty have gone to different (high schools) to teach and have dealt with classroom management issues that they wouldn’t have in a college course.” In one case, she said a college faculty member saw bullying in a high school classroom but didn’t feel equipped to respond.
Lamas has a master’s degree, which is required for most school counselors. He’s gentle with the middle school students in his class, occasionally awarding points in the Jeopardy game even when the answer isn’t perfect. Lamas had two quiz games planned that day, each one covering a different topic, but the first game took up almost all of the class time.
He ends class by taking questions about the upcoming final project. Although spring break is minutes away, the students sit still through the final minutes, except for the occasional joke and bursts of laughter. Not a single phone was in sight.
Once class ends, however, chatter ensues, the students pull out their phones, and staff escort them to the parking lot. While they may be taking a college course, they still must wait for their parents to pick them up.
History is rarely lost all at once. More often, it slips away — one forgotten battle at a time.
For Daniel Watts, that revelation arrived with the quiet ping of an alumni email. The Guardian,the campus newspaper at the University of California, San Diego, was seeking alumni donations to stave off financial collapse. Watts, who used to write for the paper, took interest — and noticed something unusual.
Buried in their appeal, the editors blamed The Guardian’s decline, in part, on a now-defunct satirical campus paper. The Koala, informally known as “The Motherfucking Koala,” had a reputation for irreverence — in 2003, it published an issue titled Jizzlam, a parody of Playboy Magazinefor Muslim men.
But for Watts, The Guardian’s jab at The Koala represented a fading understanding of the hard-won battles for a free press at UCSD.
Censorship is like poison gas: effective when your enemy is in sight — but the wind has a way of shifting.
The Koala wasn’t just a juvenile snark sheet, but an unruly bulwark of the First Amendment. In 2015, after lampooning “safe spaces,” The Koala faced defunding efforts by a student government, prodded by administrators. But with the help of FIRE and the ACLU, they fought back and won. In TheKoala v. Khosla, a federal appeals court affirmed that public universities can’t defund a student publication just because they dislike what it prints, marking a victory for all campus newspapers — including The Guardian.
But that history, along with nearly $800,000 in public funds that UCSD spent on litigation in an effort to silence its own students, now seems to have vanished.
“Reading that email,” says Watts, “and realizing that even the official student newspaper had no idea about UCSD’s history — or the sacrifices made to protect their right to publish — was a galvanizing moment.”
He adds, “If the university won’t teach students the history and value of free speech, then who will?”
Love, loyalty, and liberty: ASU alumni unite to defend free speech
News
The mission of ASU Alumni for Free Speech is to promote and strengthen free expression, academic freedom, and viewpoint diversity, both on campus and throughout the global ASU community.
So Watts stepped into the breach, founding Tritons United for Free Speech, an independent group of UCSD alumni committed to defending free expression at their alma mater.
Watts knows the terrain well.
As an undergraduate, he battled administrative efforts to censor TV broadcasts and student publications. Late nights were spent scrolling the internet and cold-calling local lawyers in search of anyone to defend them.
“No one ever answered,” he recalls. “FIRE would write letters, but they didn’t litigate back then and the ACLU was spread thin. We were on our own.”
It was a lonely education but a clarifying one. Watts decided to go to law school. “I wanted to be the kind of lawyer who would pick up the phone,” he says.
Over the past 15 years, Watts has built a robust legal career defending the First Amendment rights of students and journalists across California, arguing an anti-SLAPP case before the California Supreme Court and even running for governor in 2021 on a platform of “Free Speech. Free College.”
Now, through Tritons United for Free Speech, Watts is channeling those lessons into a new kind of advocacy. The group’s mission is threefold: educate students about the history of free speech, especially at UCSD; reform campus policies that stifle free expression; and connect students under fire with alumni who can offer legal aid, journalistic expertise, or public advocacy.
“Students are like a country without an army,” says Watts. “They have moral suasion, but they lack resources — funding for litigation, experience navigating bureaucracy, or simply the wisdom of age. Alumni bring all that, as well as staying power and historical memory.”
But the fight won’t be easy.
FIRE’s most recent College Free Speech Rankings place UCSD at a middling 133 out of 251 schools overall. More troublingly, UCSD ranks 205th on the question of whether students feel comfortable expressing ideas. Among UCSD students surveyed, 78% say shouting down a speaker is sometimes acceptable; 28% say using violence to stop speech is sometimes acceptable; and 48% say they self-censor on campus at least once or twice a month.
These numbers reflect a striking cultural shift.
“When I was at UCSD in 2001,” Watts recalls, “the student government would occasionally vote on whether to defund The Koala. Every time, it was unanimous — 20 to 0 against censorship.”
By 2015, the vote was again unanimous — 22 to 0, with 3 abstentions — but this time to defund The Koala. Even The Guardian greeted the news with a gloating article, quoting the immortal words of American diplomat Paul Bremer after the fall of Saddam Hussein: “Ladies and gentlemen, we got him!”
Watts was appalled. “You’re a newspaper! And you’re celebrating censorship?!”
Today, he fears, many students seem to believe that free speech is conditional. Good for me, but not for thee. They’ve forgotten, or more likely have never learned, as former ACLU Executive Director Ira Glasser warns, censorship is like poison gas: effective when your enemy is in sight — but the wind has a way of shifting.
As students cycle through every four years, faculty grow fearful of speaking out, and administrators grow ever entrenched with power, institutional memory slowly fades.
Alumni are the living link to that past — and the stewards of its future.
“That’s why Tritons United for Free Speech exists,” Watts says. “And that’s why I’m not giving up.”
If you’re ready to join Tritons United for Free Speech, or if you’re interested in forming a free speech alumni alliance at your alma mater, contact Bobby Ramkissoon at [email protected]. He will connect you with like-minded alumni and offer guidance on how to effectively protect free speech and academic freedom for all.
SAN DIEGO, CA — Community members will gather at the San Diego Civic Center Plaza for
a “Hands Off!” march on April 5 to protest DOGE and the Trump
administration’s attack on programs and services used by San Diego
residents. The local march will coincide with a nationwide day of
demonstrations expected to be attended by hundreds of thousands…
Organizers
describe the event as a collective response to policies impacting our
community. “San Diegans who are veterans, who are postal workers and
teachers, who rely on Social Security, Medicaid or Medicare, and who are
horrified at the Trump-Musk billionaire takeover of our government are
coming together to protest the Trump Administration’s attacks on the
rights and services they depend upon, many of them for survival” said
Angela Benson, a member of the organizing coalition.
Event Details:
What:
Over 10,000 San Diegans expected to peacefully demand “HANDS OFF!”
their rights and services in one of over 1,000 HANDS OFF! events
scheduled nationwide on April 5
Who: Coalition of San Diego Pro-Democracy Groups
When: Saturday, April 5, noon, 1 mile march to leave approximately 12:15 PM
Where: March starts at Civic Center Plaza Fountain by 1200 Third St., ends at Hall of Justice at 330 W Broadway
Transportation: Participants are encouraged to take public transit to the event
Planning group:
Change Begins With ME
CBFD Indivisible
Indivisible49
Indivisible North San Diego County
Democratic Club of Carlsbad and Oceanside
Encinitas and North Coast Democratic Club
SanDiego350
Swing Left/Take Action San Diego
Activist San Diego
50501 San Diego
Media Opportunities:
The following representatives will be available day-of the march for interviews.
If interested, please coordinate with Richard (770-653-6138) prior to
the event, and plan to arrive at the location marked below by 11:30 AM
Pacific
Representatives
Sara Jacobs – House of Representatives, CA-51 district
Scott Peters – House of Representatives, CA-50 district
Chris Ward – California State Assemblymember, 78 district
Stephen Whitburn – San Diego Councilmember
Reverend Madison Shockley II – Pilgrim United Church of Christ
Yusef Miller – Executive Director of North County Equity & Justice Coalition
Brigette Browning – Executive Secretary San Diego and Imperial Counties Labor Council and President, Unite Here!
Crystal Irving – President, Service Employees International Union (SEIU)
This audio is auto-generated. Please let us know if you have feedback.
Dive Brief:
University of California San Diego is bracing for budget cuts of up to 12.5%as it faces a potentially massive dropoff in federal funding, according to the university.
Officials predict government changes could lead to annual funding shortfalls of between $75 million and $500 million, Chancellor Pradeep Khosla said in a Wednesday community message. Researchers at the university have so far reported 50 notices of federal grant disruptions.
Citing “unprecedented conditions,” Khosla said UC San Diego is freezing all hiring and delaying capital projects.The latter includes an “indefinite” delay on construction of a new life sciences building and clinical research building.
Dive Insight:
UC San Diegois already feeling the brunt of the Trump administration’s efforts to pull the plug on wide swaths of federal funding to the higher education sector, including billions in grants commitments from multiple agencies.
In his message, Khosla noted “a concerning rise in payment delays on expected grant revenues from most federal agencies.”
As the chancellor explained, that impacts the university’s cash flows, withUC San Diego facing both short-term and long-term cash challenges from the government’s actions.
“Abrupt termination of research funding has far-reaching and damaging consequences not just for the research, but for individuals, teams, our university and society as a whole,” Khosla said.
More, and deeper, funding cuts could be on the way as President Donald Trump and Republicans seek to restructure the federal government’s role in the U.S. and potentially make dramatic reductions to existing education and research programs.
A new 15% cap on reimbursement for indirect research costs at theNational Institutes of Health— which for now have been blocked by a federal judge —would cost UC San Diego $150 million annually, the university has said.
Additionally, potential reductions to research funding and grants,as well as to reimbursement rates for Medicare and Medicaid,could all hurt UC San Diego and its medical center, Khosla said.
The university was under some financial strain even before Trump took office. For fiscal 2024, the institution logged a $2.5 million total operating deficit as its expenses grew faster than revenues, according to its latest financials.
The good news is that the university is growing, unlike many of its peers. In fall 2024, its headcount reached 43,533, a record for the university and up about a third from a decade ago, according to institutional data.
The university’s hiring freeze is part of a broader initiative across the University of California system as it grapples with funding cuts at both the federal and state levels.
Students will be able to choose from dozens of different courses across various disciplines—including STEM, English, ethnic studies and history—to satisfy the requirement, which is set to take effect as early as fall 2026.
“Climate change is an all-hands-on-deck crisis that requires understanding and solutions from all different disciplines and sectors of society,” Autumn Thoyre, co-director of the university’s Climate HQ, which supports climate-related work on campus, told KQED. “Our students’ lives are already being impacted by climate change, and so we think it’s part of our responsibility as a university to prepare students for that.”
Although numerous other colleges and universities across the nation require climate change–focused coursework, SF State officials said in a news release that its focus on climate justice, or “the unequal impacts of climate change on marginalized and underserved populations,” is novel.
“We are responding to the understanding that all jobs in the future will be climate jobs in some way. Our students, no matter their major and no matter their career, need to understand climate change because it is already impacting their lives,” Thoyre said in the release. “If you come to SFSU, you will learn about climate change and be ready for it in your career and civic life, you’ll be an informed voter and you’ll be ready for discussions with your family and friends.”
