University of California

CSHE Research Cited in EdSource Amid UC Standardized Testing Debate

June 10, 2026

As the University of California Academic Senate deliberates whether to recommend reinstating standardized testing for freshman applicants, research from the Center for Studies in Higher Education (CSHE) is playing a central role in the systemwide conversation.

A recent EdSource report, "UC freshmen increasingly are not ready for college math. Some professors want to require the SAT again," highlights a sharp division among UC faculty. While over 1,400 STEM faculty members have signed an open letter advocating for the return of the SAT/ACT to gauge math readiness, opponents of high-...

Tongshan Chang

Senior Researcher, SERU Consortium, UCOP

Tongshan Chang is Director of Institutional Research and Academic Planning at the University of California (UC) Office of the President and Consultant of UC Systemwide Academic Senate Committees on the Board of Admissions and Relations with Schools (BOARS) and Preparatory Education (UCOPE). He is SERU (Student Experience in the Research University) Senior Researcher at the Center for Studies in Higher Education at UC Berkeley, voluntarily assisting the SERU leadership and principal investigators in recruiting Chinese institutions and conducting...

Reflections on the University of California From the Free Speech Movement to the Global University by Neil J. Smelser (2010)

Neil J. Smelser
2010

These invaluable essays offer an insider’s perspective on three decades at a major American university during a time of political turmoil. Neil J. Smelser, who spent thirty-six years as a professor of sociology at the University of California, Berkeley, sheds new light on a full range of the issues that dominated virtually all institutions of higher learning during the second half of the twentieth century. Smelser considers student activism—in particular the Free Speech Movement at Berkeley—political surprises, affirmative action, multiculturalism and the culture wars, and much more...

John Aubrey Douglass

Senior Research Fellow

John Aubrey Douglass is Senior Research Fellow - Public Policy and Higher Education at the Center for Studies in Higher Education (CSHE), and is a faculty member in the Goldman School of Public Policy, at the University of California - Berkeley. His research focuses on the forces and politics of globalization, the future of Democracy, the role of universities in economic development and socioeconomic mobility, the student experience and institutional self-improvement, and the history of higher education. He has written extensively on the rise of neo-nationalism and the impact on...

Robert C. May

Distinguished Professor Emeritus, Philosophy & Linguistics, UC Davis

Robert C. May is Distinguished Professor Emeritus of Philosophy and Linguistics at UC Davis. He received his Ph.D. in Linguistics and Philosophy from MIT in 1977, and his Bachelor’s degree from Swarthmore College. Prof. May joined the UC Irvine faculty in 1986, and moved to UC Davis in 2006. He held the Venice Chair in Philosophy of Language and Theoretical Linguistics, a Fulbright Distinguished Professorship, and visiting positions at Columbia University, Ecole Normale Superieure, and Ecole des Hautes Etudes en Sciences Sociales.


Prof. May’s research interests span areas in...

New ROPS Report Challenges Return to SAT

September 30, 2025

SAT FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

New UC Berkeley Report Challenges Return to SAT: Calls for Public Universities to Double Down on Public Mission

Berkeley, CA – September 30, 2025 — As a number of elite “Ivy-Plus” universities have reinstated SAT and ACT requirements, a new research report by Saul Geiser, Senior Associate at UC Berkeley’s Center...

Charlie Eaton

Associate Professor, Sociology, UC Merced

Professor Eaton is an economic sociologist who studies the power of elites in politics and the economy, as well as policy and organizational strategies to rebalance power and wealth towards ordinary people. His book, Bankers in the Ivory Tower (University of Chicago Press, 2022), is about the relationship between financialization, student debt, inequalities in higher education, and the rise of private equity and hedge fund investors among US billionaires....

Karen Merritt

From 2006 to the present, Karen Merritt has been a Visiting Scholar and Associate of the Center for Studies in Higher Education, University of California, Berkeley.

Merritt is the co-editor (with Jane Lawrence) of From Rangeland to Research University: The Birth of the University of California, Merced, a chronicle of the founding of UC’s tenth campus published by Jossey-Bass in 2007. She is currently working on a book about the role of the University of California and the Sierra Club in the founding of the National Park Service.

Merritt received her B.A. in English literature...

Chronicle of the University of California

The Chronicle offers a historical perspective, considering past university events in the context of ongoing changes within the university. Issues were organized around single themes that presented an inherent longitudinal view of the university’s development.

University of California History