UC, CSU Leaders Ease Admission Requirements Due to Coronavirus Pandemic

As California's education leaders continue to grapple with unprecedented disruptions caused by the coronavirus pandemic, they're announcing significant developments this week: a temporary overhaul of state university admissions rules, a major labor agreement between teachers and administrators and a hefty investment in distance learning from Google.

In an effort to level the playing field for high school students affected by the coronavirus pandemic, University of California and California State University decided late Tuesday night to loosen undergraduate admissions requirements.

Students hoping to attend UCs and CSUs won’t have to meet minimum grade requirements for core classes affected by the crisis, and they won’t be penalized for missing the deadline to hand over transcripts. UC has also suspended the SAT/ACT requirement for those applying for fall of 2021, and CSU is considering a similar move.

Calling the COVID-19 crisis “a disaster of historic proportions disrupting every aspect of our lives,” UC President Janet Napolitano said the admissions changes will ensure students vying for a spot at UC get a "full and fair shot – no matter their current challenges."

As the pandemic hit, high schoolers were dismissed from classroom learning, standardized tests were canceled and some schools switched to pass/no pass grading. All those changes have been worrying students preparing for college.

“We want to help alleviate the tremendous disruption and anxiety that is already overwhelming prospective students due to COVID-19,” UC Board of Regents Chair John A. Pérez said.

Seniors already have acceptance or rejection letters from UC and CSU in hand, but typically acceptance can be rescinded if students’ spring semester grades drop dramatically.

For Oakland senior Malia Johnson, who attends Fremont High School, the changes are welcome.

“It’s relieving that they’ll accept a pass/no pass, so I don’t have to worry about that,” she said. “And they’ll just accept the GPA that I have.”

Still, she’s concerned about some of her friends who had viewed their senior year as a way to boost up their GPA and make up credits.

Johnson was accepted to Cal Poly San Luis Obispo and is getting ready to start there this fall. She says given how overwhelmed high school administrators are right now, she’s been anxious about getting a hold of her final transcripts. The new flexibility from CSU is a relief.

“It allows me to give my school a break because I would have bothered them for a transcript,” she says. “So now I can relax and let them figure out how they’re going to do that.”

The revised requirements impact more than 550,000 students who apply to CSUs and UCs.

UC changes include:

• Suspending the letter grade requirement for A-G courses completed in winter/spring/summer 2020 for all students, including those already admitted to UC as freshmen.
• Suspending the standardized test requirement for students applying for fall 2021 freshman admission.
• No rollback of admissions offers resulting from students or schools missing official final transcript deadlines
• For transfer students, a temporary lift of the cap on the number of transferable units with “pass/no pass” grading applied toward the minimum 60 semester/90 quarter units required for junior standing.

See a full list of CSU changes here.

Google provides free Wi-Fi for students

Google has agreed to tackle the problem of some students lacking internet connectivity as a barrier to digital distance learning by providing free Wi-Fi to 100,000 rural households across the state.

Close to 20% of California students lacked digital connectivity at home before the pandemic hit. While the additional hot spots won't solve the issue for all of the state's rural areas, Gov. Gavin Newsom touted the hot spots as high-quality internet that will help close the gap.

In a tweet, Google CEO Sundar Pichai said the company wants to help make distance learning "more accessible."

Pay for teachers, classified employees during remote learning

While teachers across the state had been assured they would continue to be paid while working from home during the distance learning experiments being put in place, some schools districts' classified employees were not clear on whether they were getting the same deal.

On Wednesday, Newsom announced a labor agreement, which he called "a stubborn issue that manifested itself very differently in the thousand-plus school districts throughout the state of California."  

According to Jeff Freitas, president of the California Federation of Teachers, the intent of the agreement is to ensure that classified employees such as custodians, school clerks and substitute teachers also receive pay during the time of remote learning.

In Sonoma County, Superintendent of Schools Steven Herrington said the county had continued to pay classified employees in the same way they were paying teachers since the physical shutdown of school sites began, because "it's only fair."