Why are 38 percent of Stanford students saying they're disabled?

Rising disability rates are not limited to the Ivy League.

A close friend of mine is faculty at a medium sized university and specializes in disability accommodations. She is also deaf. Despite being very bright and articulate, she had a tough time in university, especially lecture-heavy undergrad. In my eyes, most of the students she deals with are "young and disorganized" rather than crippled. Their experience of university is wildly different from hers. Being diagnosed doesn't immediately mean you should be accommodated.

The majority of student cases receive extra time on exams and/or attendance exemptions. But the sheer volume of these cases take away a lot of badly needed time and funding for students who are talented, but are also blind or wheelchair bound. Accommodating this can require many months of planning to arrange appropriate lab materials, electronic equipment, or textbooks.

As the article mentions, a deeply distorted idea of normal is being advanced by the DSM (changing ADHD criteria) as well as social media (enjoying doodling, wearing headphones a lot, putting water on the toothbrush before toothpaste. These and many other everyday things are suggested signs of ADHD/autism/OCD/whatever). This is a huge problem of its own. Though it is closely related to over-prescribing education accommodations, it is still distinct.

Unfortunately, psychological-education assessments are not particularly sensitive. They aren't good at catching pretenders and cannot distinguish between a 19 year old who genuinely cannot develop time management skills despite years of effort & support, and one who is still developing them fully. Especially after moving out and moving to a new area with new (sub)cultures.

Occasionally, she sees documents saying "achievement is consistent with intelligence", a polite way of saying that a student isn't very smart, and poor grades are not related to any recognized learning disability. Really and truly, not everyone needs to get an undergrad degree.

Yep. Speaking from experience, top colleges will give students with ADHD or similar conditions as much as double time or more on exams. One college I know of sends them to a disability services office to proctor it, in which they simply don't enforce time limits at all.

Coincidentally, there's an overwhelming number of students with ADHD compared to before these kinds of accommodations became standard.

Maybe the real problem is we are testing people on how fast they can do something not if they can do something.

In general, being good at academics require you to think carefully not quickly. I suspect there is a correlation between people who think things through and people who do well in school.

Also it would be fun if you had to pick a star card every semester for one off mechanics like:

“red letter day: papers submitted in tuesdays must use red pen and will be graded in black ink”;

“balogna bingo: all sandwich labels through April will include a random number — match four numbers with another student and your next lunch is free!”; or

“vocabulary dairy: free froyo every week for the students in the 90th percentile for how many times they use the words important, therefore, or however in their papers, but you have to agree to buy a Manual of Style (and provide proof of purchase at the froyo counter)”.

*Ironically one is called RA https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/12/ra

Like what's the point of having the test be time constrained? If there is no point, then just let everyone have more time. If there is a point to having the test be time constrained, then aren't we just holding one group to a lower standard than another group? Why is that good?

Same question about lectures. Is there a reason everyone can't record the lectures? If so, then why do we have different standards?

I think at the college level, grades should in some sense reflect your proficiency at a given topic. An "A" in calculus should mean that you can do calculus and that evaluation should be independent of your own strengths, weaknesses, disabilities, genetic predisposition to it, and so on. Imagine an extreme example: someone is in a car crash, suffers brain damage, and is now unable to do calculus. This is tragic. But I don't also feel that it now makes sense to let them do their tests open book or whatever to accommodate for that. As a society we should do whatever we can to support this individual and help them live their best life. But I don't see how holding them to a lower standard on their college exams accomplishes that.

Why is that gated like that?

I counter: If students are requesting specific accommodations en-mass, maybe schools should rethink overall decisions. Maybe housing shouldn't be shared. Maybe the workload should be relaxed.

Disabilities are far more commonplace than you might imagine. The number of disabled people per 1,000 likely hasn't changed, but our recognition of disabilities such as autism, anxiety disorders, etc. has gotten better.

I'm sure a very small amount of folks do abuse the system, but I'd bet money that most actually have disabilities.

If you still think otherwise, think again: I was diagnosed with ADHD in my mid 30s, and with autism in my mid 40s. This is through extended, multiple hour testing. Nobody told me I had these issues. I was simply told I was a terrible person that didn't do his school work and behaved poorly at school. Now, with an understanding of autism, ADHD, and the new anxiety disorder I have thanks to a recent brain injury, I'm able to finally address this stuff.

I also aced higher level, computer centric stuff, and set a record for one of the quickest to graduate in my state at a technical school (2 months instead of 2 years).

Bottom line is that you should not be making poor assumptions about people abusing the system without evidence to prove it.

I do feel like a test that is so focused on speed rather than ability seems like it loses a lot of its utility. There's a bunch of math I can't do. It doesn't matter if you give me an hour or two -- I won't be able to do it. But distinguishing between the ability to solve a problem in 30s versus 40s seems to be missing the point.

Now people with actual disabilities have a huge uphill battle because even mentioning an accomodation might be requested puts you at the back of the line.

Sue you say? LOL. Hope you have five figures ready to throw away for a retainer just to gamble that anybody still cares.

My research was done a long time ago. I understood Ritalin to have mild neurotoxic effects, but Adderall et al to be essentially harmless. Do you have a source for the benefits giving way to problems long-term?

Regardless, your overall point is interesting. Presumably, these drugs are (ridiculously tightly) controlled to prevent society-wide harm. If that ostensible harm isn't reflected in reality, and there is a net benefit in having a certain age group accelerate (and, presumably, deepen) their education, perhaps this type of overwhelming regulatory control is a mistake. In that sense, it's a shame that these policies are imposed federally, as comparative data would be helpful.

1. some of the things they list as "disabilities" are sicknesses which _can_ be disabling but not per see disabilities

2. all of the things listed aren't one/off but have not just huge gradients, but huge variations. You might be afflicted in a way which "disables" you from living a normal live or job but still might be able to handle university due to how it differs.

3. non of the things list is per-see/directly reducing your ability to have deep understanding in a specialized field. ADHD sometimes comes with hyper focus, which if it manifest in the right way can help you in university. It's also might make more "traditionally structured jobs" hardly possible for you and bad luck with how professors handle their courses is more likely to screw you over. Anxiety is often enough more topic specific, e.g. social anxiety. This means it can be disabling for many normal jobs but not affect you in universities which don't require you physical presence, but if they do you basically wait out the course and then learn after being back home. In rare cases it can also help with crunch learning before an exam. Etc. etc.

Actually if we go a step future all of the named health issues can make it more likely for you to end up in high standard universities. Hyper focus on specific topics from ADHD might have started your journey into science even as a child. Anxiety might have lead to you studying more. Since might have been an escape from a painful reality which later lead to you developing depression.

If we consider how high standard universities can cause a lot of stress which can cause an out brake of anxiety or depression in some people it just is another data point why we would expect higher number of health issues (if you lump a bunch of very different issues together like they do).

Later they then also throw in autism in the list of mental issues, even through autism always had been higher represented in academia due to how it sometimes comes with "special interests" and make socializing as a child harder, i.e. it can lead to a child very early and very long term focusing on scientific topics out of their fully own interest. (But it doesn't have to, it can also thoroughly destroy you live to a point "learning to cope with it" isn't possible anymore and you are basically crippled as long as you don't luck out massively with your job and environment.)

Honestly the whole article has a undertone of people with "autism, ADHD, anxiety, depression" shouldn't be "elite" university and any accommodations for them should be cut.

Now to be fair accommodations have to be reasonable and you have to learn to cope with your issues. Idk. how they are handled in the US, but from what I have seen in the EU that is normally the case. E.g. with dyslexia and subtle nerve damage making hand writing harder I could have gotten a slight time extensions for any non-multiple choice exams. I didn't bother because it didn't matter all (but one) exams where done in a way where if you know the topic well you can finish in 60-70% of the time and if you don't even 3x time would not help you much (and the extension was like flat 15min). That is except if my nerve damage or dyslexia where worse then I really would have needed the time, not for solving questions but for writing down answers. There was one exam which tested more if you had crammed in all knowledge then testing understanding, in that exam due to dyslexia and my hands not being able to write quite as fast as normal I actually last some points, not because I didn't know but because I wasn't able to write fast enough.

The point here is if done well people which don't need accommodations shouldn't have a huge benefits even if they get them, but people needing it not getting it can mean punishing them for thing unrelated to actual skills. Live will do so enough after university, no need to force it into universities which should focus on excellence of knowledge and understanding.

It's much harder to fake deafness or blindness to get that extra housing and exam benefits.

- why would you get a single, for ADHD, non-social-related anxiety, non-sever autism or depression (especially in the later case you probably shouldn't be in a single)

- I mean sure social anxiety, sever autism can be good reasons for a single.

through in general the whole US dorms thing is strange to me (in the EU there are dorms, but optional (in general). And 50%+ of studentsfind housing outside of it (but depends on location). This allows for a lot more individualized living choices.)

>In 1990 7.4% of single young adults were living with a roommate, increasing to 8.1% in 2000. From 2010 through 2022 the share was stable, reaching 8.7% in 2022.

>From 1990 through 2016 the share of single young adults living alone remained relatively stable, ranging from 6.0% to 6.8%. However, the share increased to 8.2% in 2022.

Although I think this does include current students.

https://www.bgsu.edu/ncfmr/resources/data/family-profiles/FP...

That seems like an important distinction, and makes the rest of the article (which focuses on educational accommodations) look mistaken.

If someone says they cheated in school, the first thing that pops into your head probably isn’t that they might have gotten a single dorm room, right?

Also, there are academic components to disability cheating. As the article notes, registering for a disability at some of these universities grants you additional time to take tests.

There's a point where it's not immoral to leverage systems available to you to land yourself in a better situation. Avoiding increasingly-overcrowded housing situations is I think one of them.

If Stanford's standards for these housing waivers are sufficiently broad that 38% of their students quality, isn't that a problem with Stanford's definitions, not with "cheating"?

On the bright side, i met my spouse and we’ve been together for 10+ years so not all bad lol.

I’m a slow reader. Do i have a disability? Who cares - i can still read well and did OK at school, that’s all that matters.

People that game the system in this way are basically frauds. They take resources that are intended to benefit people that ARE struggling with basic life skills in some way.

So yeah, I'll take nepo babies and racism over this any day;

Maybe, but my single data point: I'm on the board for a condo corporation and even though we spend a lot of time dealing with pet policies and the damage pets (read: dogs) cause, we have a total of ZERO pets registered (and paying the monthly fee), and these are overwhelmingly owners not renters who might be excluded from having pets to begin with.

This is a good point. I suspect that even without increased awareness around ADHD or autism, we'd still be seeing an increase in diagnoses because of the increased intensity of modern stuff

> A lot of modern, aspiring-middle-class and online culture

Theres also a pernicious way of identifying with the struggle. Instead of I have trouble focusing in certain situations, so maybe I should find ways to spend my time (careers, hobbies) that work well with that. We instead go to 'I have ADHD' and my 'job' should make special accommodations for me.

Regardless of whether a job should or should not make accommodations. It's not a very helpful construct to think they should. It removes agency from the person experiencing the struggle. Which in turn puts them farther from finding a place that they would fit in well.

For the vast majority of behaviors (ADHD, attachment issues, autism, etc) they exist on a continuum and are adaptive/helpful in certain situations. By pathologizing them, we(society) loose touch for what they mean in our life. It also makes discourse hard because the (this is causing me to truly not be able to function) gets mixed in with the (this is a way that my brain behaves, but I can mostly live a life).

... provided that that gauntlet hasn't stuck a label on you that makes everybody think you're unsuitable for any role, and provided that it's bothered to develop the abilities you do have, and provided that other people aren't being unnecessarily rigid about what roles they'll allow to exist.

Sure, maybe it's stupid to frame it as "THIS counts as being disabled and THAT doesn't"... but we have a world where many systems have decided to do that, and may act slightly less insanely inflexible if they've put you in the "disabled" bucket.

If everybody has some limitations, maybe everybody should get some accommodations. You know, so that they can actually contribute using their strengths. But I'm not holding my breath.

This stuck out to me, because even in tech, especially after being diagnosed with ADHD (out of desperately failing to adapt, despite technically being reasonably competent) my career and statistically that of many others is normally anything but stable. An overwhelming percentage of jobs and disciplines do not have any real affordances for just a little variation from the norm, and people broadly still do not believe the condition presents anything but hilarious superficial differences, but that otherwise if the person shares one skill with other employees they should be capable of being an arbitrary cog like any other.

"Other people are capable of showing up on time, why can't you!?"

"Well, I have ADHD, I have to take medication to regulate my dopamine levels and struggle with time blindless, it's a real problem that I wish I didn't have, but I do my best given regularly switching contexts and priorities"

"Ya, great, that's cute but show up on time, are we on the same page?"

"No, but I'll say yes because you can't understand, I have no choice, and I'll continue doing what I'm doing until you fire me for not meeting your expectations, even if they have nothing to do with the skill I do actually have and gravitate towards, and would like to continue applying in service of company growth or whatever"

"Great, then we're on the same page, and I'll just start checking in on you more frequently because clearly you're retarded, thanks"

----

The only people who do realistically get accomodations are either in super niche fields, are absolutely exceptional in their niche field, or are just on their own or in industries that require none of the normal things associated with their discipline.

Saying everybody has a few things that they struggle is kind of offensive.

I struggle because my parents were drug addicts and my father tried to kill us all when I was 5.

> This year, 38 percent of Stanford undergraduates are registered as having a disability; in the fall quarter, 24 percent of undergraduates were receiving academic or housing accommodations.

Mind, the disability rate for 18-34 year olds is 8.3% in the US, so even 24% is shockingly high. That's the same disability rate as 65-74 year olds.

The stats are thin because not everything from private universities (where the disability numbers are highest) is reported. However they did get this:

> L. Scott Lissner, the ADA coordinator at Ohio State University, told me that 36 percent of the students registered with OSU’s disability office have accommodations for mental-health issues

Note that's only accommodations for mental health issues, so exclusive of the numerous other disability types.

https://med.emory.edu/departments/pediatrics/divisions/neona...

lol...there is nothing humble about this statement. >50% of people think they're above average.

TL;DR: Disability is not inherent in difference, but rather a combination of the difference and an environment in which that difference is not well-supported. For an analogy - a deep-sea fish is blind, but not disabled by their blindness. Similarly, a kid who "can't sit still" isn't disabled unless we put them in an environment where they have to.

Before readers rush out to acquire Adderall, note that "trying" it does not give an accurate picture of what it's like to take it long-term. It has a high discontinuation rate because people read comments like this online or borrow a dose from their friend and think they're going to be running around like Bradley Cooper in Limitless for the rest of their career.

A new patient who tries Adderall will feel a sense of euphoria, energy, and motivation that is temporary. This effect does not last. This is why the Reddit ADHD forums are full of people posting "I just took my first dose and I'm so happy I could cry" followed a few weeks later by "Why did my Adderall stop working?". The focus part is still mostly working, but no drug is going to make you feel happy, energized, and euphoric for very long.

> Just to get legal and easy access to performance-enhancing drugs in elite educational (aka competitive) setting it makes sense to get "disability".

You're confusing two different things. Registering with the school's disability office is orthogonal to getting a prescription for anything.

Obviously if there's safety issues but for stimulants unsafe doses will 100% always decrease performance, because they'll affect sleep.

https://slatestarcodex.com/2017/12/28/adderall-risks-much-mo...

How do you know this?

Do you have access to their medical records?

Are you in HR and have access to any accomodations they may have filed?

Do they even have accommodations filed at work? Neither I nor many of the people I knew in university who had accommodations needed them in the workplace because the structure of an undergrad course setting is wildly different from that of an actual workplace.

I have told HR at basically every place I've worked that I had filed for accommodations during university and that I generally manage my disability well but that I may need to file for formal accommodations at some point in the future. This isn't something that I've necessarily told people I work with and it's not visible or obvious. Most disabilities aren't.

Were you a solo founder of 5 companies? I literally cannot fathom that you worked at 5 even very modest-sized tech companies and never experienced a colleague with some level of what we’d call neurodivergent.

I can’t validate that the rate is 38%, but I find it hard to believe it’s under 5% and if it’s 5%, you’d be hard-pressed to avoid crossing paths across 5 companies and 15 years.

How does one even know this? Do you ask everyone you meet if they are neuro-divergent? That’s awkward as hell.

I'd say 30-40% is definitely in line with what I saw at various FAANG employers. Though it may be that other types of employer optimise less for those attributes.

> I haven't seen one in 15 years across 5+ different companies

Have you considered that you yourself may be neurodivergent?

From what I understand, some autistic people assume everyone has the same worldview and agenda as they do, they lack a theory of mind. I’m not making this accusation about you, I’m bringing it up because I find it surprising that everyone you’ve worked with is neurotypical.

I can usually tell if someone is neurodivergent or not within the first minute of meeting them, usually just from eye contact and body language.

Hmm, have you looked in the mirror perhaps?

> Is it much though? 38%? I haven't seen one in 15 years across 5+ different companies.

Just another anecdote, but where I work (tech startup) there are at least 7 other employees (that I know of) and I can identify every single one as autistic. Three are one type, another three are another type, and I think the one other as well as myself are the same type.

Research in the space hasn't advanced enough yet for this to be consensus, but in my opinion this preprint is exactly correct, and is what taught me that there are even subtypes to recognize at all: https://www.thetransmitter.org/spectrum/untangling-biologica...

There are, of course, plenty of non-neurodivergent tech companies. These are typically boring corporate ones, though I think there are some non-flashy ones that are perfectly respectable. I don't think Microsoft would count, though; Asperger's can look a lot like a lack of neurodivergence if you don't pay close enough attention.

Ah, you accidentally showed your hand there. DEI does not provide benefits; it seeks to prevent continued, assumedly unfair, selection processes. Whether or not that is appropriate, or if the system was unfair, is arguable; fictitious "benefits" are not.

No one gets a DEI check from the government. But since you don't even see that others around you have disabilities, we can't really expect you to know much more than Fox tells you.

This is it exactly. Programmers believe that we are God's special autists. 'Neurodivergent' is a nonfalsifiable label just like 'queer'

I'm guessing you are blind, yea? Otherwise how could you otherwise justify such a statement?

Do you really think they spend that money advertising, and that you can then not buy the products?!?

Sure, you need a corrupt doctor. But the amount of advertising tells you exactly the amount of corrupt doctors that can act as drug dealers for you.

If someone is advertising something at you, it's because you can get it and you are potential market.

Not rocket science.

Somehow the whole country has collective blindness to this fact that is scarily obvious to anyone from outside the USofA that drops by.

Drugs adverts for prescription drugs should be illegal: because there is no legal justification for them.

I do. I still subscribe to your ideals or at least mostly follow them. But for lack of playing such games, I saw my children’s opportunities slip away.

What are your ideals?

If everything is a competition, then of course people will leverage personal advantage for personal gain. But why is everything a competition?

It's not "cheating" in that players are using the system as-is, and after a critical mass of people adopt it, there is no way to play competitively without it.

The simple answer becomes to patch the behavior out of the system, although that is rarely popular with the people who have adopted the strategy and invested a lot in the system.

1:https://quake.fandom.com/wiki/Bunny_Hopping

Humans are as a mass dumb animals, if we give them the opportunity for individual gratification at long-term cost for the group they are going to take it immediately.

I’ll buy this

>professional medical care, access to some kind of justice system,

I doubt this. Most people in the US are probably aware one healthcare or legal issue in their family will derail the whole family’s future.

That is not to say things are worse than before. But humans view the world in relative terms, and they seem to expect more than reality can offer. And whereas before there was ignorance, today, there is widespread knowledge and visibility into the gulf between the have nots, the haves, and the have even mores.

By those metrics yes, but not by the more important metrics IMO of: buying a house, having a stable job, starting a family, etc.

If you're saying that people always try to game the system, whatever it is, then I agree however.

He/she probably wouldn’t have gotten into an elite university without that help through childhood.

>You seem to imply your conditions have not really improved and you need same/similar accommodations

They didn't share the nature of their current accommodations.

My overall point is that learning disabilities like dyslexia have no impact on intelligence, and accommodations just level the playing field. I imagine that if I hadn't been diagnosed with dyslexia and ADHD, I wouldn't have made it to the same school.

But for people who truly need academic accommodations, the playing field will never be level, because every aspect of school takes them longer. I don't get more time to study for exams, and if it takes me twice as long to read and comprehend the same chapter of a textbook as someone without dyslexia, I have to study twice as long just to get through the same content. I think it's fair that I get to take notes using "prohibited technology" during lecture when it is impossible for me to decode what the lecturer is saying fast enough to turn it into handwritten notes.

However, I agree with the article that the percentage of students who claim to have disabilities has gotten out of control. Almost 60% of the students in the extended exam room finish the exam in the standard time anyway. It does make it appear as though everyone with accommodations is gaming the system.

Having ADHD and dyslexia is not "quirky" or fun. It consistently ruins my life. It is not something I make part of my identity.

I would do anything to not need accommodations.

Ranting about how all these diagnoses are fake is not.

Time may revise our opinions of the current state, but with the exception of malpracticing professionals, the diagnoses are valid for given state of medical health knowledge.

In a highly competitive environment like Stanford, isn't it more likely that it's to get more time on tests -> better grades -> higher paying job?

An unpleasant fact of law-school faculty life is that, at least at my school, I'm required to grade students so that the average is between 3.2 (a high B) and 3.4 (a low B-plus). Because of the nature of my course [0], a timed final exam is about the only realistic way to spread out The Curve.

[0] https://toedtclassnotes.site44.com/Syllabus.html

If you lie about having a disability to get extra time, you're falsely gaining an advantage over other students taking the same test. That's cheating.

Like it or not, there are life changing impacts to others by cheating at this stuff. This is unambiguously cheating.

I'm not aware of many jobs where employers don't care how fast the work gets done.

Success as a lawyer often requires the ability to handle a certain amount of pressure. Timed exams are one way of screening for that ability. But it's by no means a sure-fire predictor of success: Legendary trial lawyer Joe Jamail [0] flunked his first-year Torts class at UT Austin [1], yet went on to become a billionnaire.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joe_Jamail

[1] https://abovethelaw.com/2015/12/r-i-p-to-a-billionaire-lawye...

You are perhaps mistaking which side of the line Stanford would select for. It is a school that produces and prefers sociopaths. Its engineering curriculum, almost uniquely among universities, has no requirement for an ethics course. You can fulfill Stanford's "Technology in Society" requirement by taking a course where you network with VCs for a semester. It is a factory for making jerks.

World Health Organization: 16%

https://www.who.int/news-room/fact-sheets/detail/disability-...

UN Department of Economic and Social Affairs: 15%

https://www.un.org/development/desa/disabilities/resources/f...

CDC: 25% of Americans

https://www.cdc.gov/disability-and-health/articles-documents...

ROD Group: 22%

https://www.rod-group.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/09/The-Glo...