Claims of disability are highest at elite universities
robkhenderson.com
robkhenderson.com
I'm fairly convinced a big part of clearing the barrier to entry of these elite institutions is having a deep understanding of exactly the things you need to do to succeed given the structure of the system and the nature of the competition. Students at "non-elite" institutions are more likely to come from backgrounds where even if you DO have a disability, maybe nobody ever tells you that you can go to the doctor for it, or that something like "accommodations" exist to help you.
- At some universities, registering as having certain disabilities gives students priority access in the housing queue, so anyone who isn't registered with the disability office gets to choose after those who are.
- Certain disabilities qualified people for a lottery for single dorm rooms. They have a limited number of single rooms for students with disabilities, so now that 30-40% of the student body is registering for them it's just another lottery.
- Some universities allow students to record lectures only if they're registered with the disability office. If you're not, you can't record.
- I remember one comment saying that people were doing it just to get newer dorms with hardwood floors, which were reserved for students with disabilities
- Having certain disabilities qualified people to get out of the required meal plan. So if someone didn't want to buy a meal plan for whatever reason (including to save money) their only option was to claim certain disabilities. At other universities it was enough to claim you were following a Jain diet which objected to root vegetables and other things, which the meal plans couldn't provide for. If you don't claim a disability or Jain, you have to buy the meal plan.
Adding to this: Even back when I was in college (not that long ago) it became known that registering as having ADHD qualified you for extra time on exams. A lot of parents were pushing their kids to get registered as ADHD purely for academic advantage. A few people I knew did it and were blown away at how easy it was to get a diagnosis (they just memorized the ADHD inventory questions and went to the laziest doctor they could find) and then walk that down to the disability office and suddenly they were exempt from a lot of the test taking requirements every else had. I remember someone bragging that they got to take their tests in a special location with proctors that had to be scheduled later, so they were taking every test a day or two after everyone else. They used that time to quiz all of their friends on the test content. I doubt (or hope) this level of manipulation is still common though.
I doubt (or hope) this level of manipulation is still common though.
In sixth grade I was frustrated focusing on exams because I'm easily irritated by noise (misophonia). So, I asked for a separate room, or, as I remember putting it, a closet. They sent me to a different room and offered me four hours. I couldn't seem to explain that I don't need more time, I just want it to be quiet. I never asked again.
Kids would dream of growing up and "să dea țeapă" (give a stake = pull a con) or "să tragă un tun" (fire a cannon = pull off major con) and then never working for the rest of their lives.
A hobby growing in popularity seems to be perusing the internet on the lookout for something to be "outraged" by, no matter how mundane.
As someone who played hockey for years, this always felt like such a contrast from my experience where the norm was to conceal an injury and power through so you could keep playing.
If you were bleeding and unphased, you were the envy of your teammates. If a guy was limping off the ice after blocking a shot, you did not want to see the bruise he had underneath.
What I will be interested in seeing is, as students graduate into the job market, how the feigning victimhood approach fits into getting a well paying job. For all I know, it may pay off. Only time will tell I guess.
Most of the power in that came from classes of victims being untouchable. Some of that was the decorum of not wanting to punch down. Some was the reasonable ask that people realize they had advantages others didn't have.
All of it was completely unprepared for being gamed and infiltrated by bad faith actors.
https://www.thetimes.com/us/news-today/article/40-percent-st...
And people wonder why college tuition prices are so high.
1. Drastically reduce admissions until a 1:1 ratio of rooms to students is achieved. Once rooms are full, you have to reject students. Overall college admissions is cut significantly.
2. Massively increase tuitions so that more single-occupancy rooms can be built
So which one do you choose? I suspect most of these proposals rely on a world where money is infinite and nothing has to be sacrificed to get there.
Or don't require students (especially freshmen) to live in dorms so more people can live in apartments off campus to reduce the need for dorm rooms?
Imagine being the TA that has to proctor an examination that takes an indefinite amount of time.
I understand your sentiment but it seems like you’re avoiding the harsh reality of things. And these things are not that “harsh” in the grand scheme of things.
Fool the ref, win the game.
(only partially tongue-in-cheek)
I've actually noticed the same pattern where I live in Europe. Some young adults go to great lengths to find a psychiatrist that will diagnose them something. I heard than on multiple occasions, reported by doctors themselves, and anecdotal evidence.
To be honest, I don't know how much this is a reality, and how much of it is an old man rant :)
Obvious counter-move for the elite universities: Detail every student's disabilities & accommodations on their transcripts, to assist potential employers and graduate schools in anticipating their special needs.
If I had someone spontaneously tell me a potential hire were disabled I would block all communication from that someone. Way too much risk.
Does anyone legitimately think that those are not used as factors for candidate selection?
Probably yes. The college's motive is to axe the rate of mendacious malingering; pushing beyond that could give them legal costs without commensurate benefits.
Give extra benefits to certain groups and people will naturally take advantage of it.
The only evidence anybody has ever provided is that students are top universities are more likely to have registered disabilities. The conclusion you are supposed to draw from this is that students at top universities are fraudulently accessing accommodations that make their coursework easier such that they have inflated grades and an unfair advantage in the job market. And then you are supposed to conclude that we need a large overhaul in the way that disability accommodations work at universities.
There are about five steps that are needed to go from the evidence to these conclusions, none of which are supported by evidence.
I do not believe that there is any compelling reason to seek a solution here.
What is your opinion of one of the most concerning counterpoint (in my opinion): that we are normalizing prescription stimulants and accommodations for individuals that otherwise don’t need them / could succeed without them.
Know that I don’t really care too too much from a fairness standpoint, especially in the professional workplace. I’m most concerned with subjecting a generation of people to a reliance of stimulants and secondly concerned about the affects on the ability for HS and university educators to assess and evaluate their students.
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Edit: Third and less seriously, a hypothetical: if I learned that >40% of our elite students or young professionals were on Xanax, cocaine, ketamine, or encapsulated meth or required an assistant to take notes and record lectures I would be appalled. How would you interpret this?
My thought is that it is a clear signal of a social or cultural malady if our best and brightest - as a population - are strongly overrepresented in their reliance on disability accommodations or prescription drugs.
First, the question of university accommodations is completely separate from the question of prescription medicine. I don't have any opinion about the rate of prescriptions for things like ADHD, largely because I have no information. For university accommodations I am not aware of compelling evidence that they are being over-granted for people who do not need them. Notice how all of this panic stops at "lots of people have listed disabilities" and don't actually demonstrate that these people are getting oodles of accommodations. My experience as a spouse of a professor is that a ton of students with registered disabilities nevertheless do not get any form of special treatment and there has been literally zero change in her ability to evaluate students even when they do get accommodations.
You can be concerned about stimulants if you want. That is a totally different topic.
Because it's not actually about accomodation for specific disabilities, it's about people with "disabilities" getting preferential treatment in areas that have nothing to do with their actual "disability".
(Which itself is a review of a book about the topic)
This is something else. We used to prize resilience and toughness, especially in the face of adversity. Now we're given rewards for whining the loudest - and this is the anticipated outcome.
The magnitude is different. Bovino and Miller act above the law. And the corruption and graft among some cabinet members is off the charts. (This following a Presidency where the preëmptive pardon was pioneered for family members.)
Not trying to be dismissive or reductive, but when 15-50% of honors students at elite universities are a part of this it deserves way more scrutiny that it gets. Same is true in a lot of elite private sector spaces.
It generally does not translate to widespread social benefit.
I don’t think many individuals in the population implicated by this article are acting will purely fraudulent and selfish intent. It’s more subtle.
Certainly one possible explanation, but "obviously people would abuse that, thus this is abuse" is still an assumption, not an evidenced claim.
At my university most kids I knew cheated. Having done the work honestly - lots of classmates would ask if they could glimpse my answers during exams.
In my naivety I believed that there would be somewhat of a comeuppance but no they’re just as successful (and some even more!) than I. When the outcomes are extreme, people will do anything to stay ahead.
Most Americans are honest hard working people. Don’t be them is the hard lesson I’ve learned.
Accomodation Nation
https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/2026/01/elite-universit...
In practice, the easiest lever professors can pull to reduce test scores is to decrease the time limit. Generally, that relatively benefits people that can think, read, and write faster, who happen to be the most knowledgeable.
But now, your exams are a glorified IQ or handwriting speed test.
That's where accomodations fail, because it's a free bonus that helps everyone instead of only benefitting the disabled.
I have a disability where I physically can't handwrite without pain, so I have to type everything. I also chose computer engineering, which requires creating matrices and circuit diagrams.
I physically, no matter how hard I try, draw a circuit diagram in Microsoft Paint as fast as you can draw one with your hand. I can not type and debug Microsoft Word's equation editor's rendering of a matrix faster than a normal person can draw it. So I get more time to do those things.
Generally, in most of my exams, the extra time wouldn't benefit a normal person in my situation. If I do not know the equations for a pn junction I'm not going to magically reinvent the avalanche effect.
In some exams, I can finish early because I deeply know the concepts. But oftentimes I'm spending a third of the exam futzing with the equation editor or using the line tool to get a zigzag trying to meet a deadline.
But the thing is, I also don't attend an elite university. I attended a mid-tier one called Toronto Metropolitan University where most students struggled with the concepts and the professors could test knowledge. Rarely did my peers do practice problems or show up to lectures. Time was almost never a constraint because my professors could differentiate on learning.
At a school like the University of Toronto, almost every student has studied past exams. They attend every lecture session including the ones they're not enrolled in. They learn everything and grind until 11 pm on practice problems.
At that level, it's hard to focus only on teaching new concepts. The few courses that do, like Harvard Math 55, are legendarily difficult for the professors and students. I know because I did really well in Waterloo's version before transferring due to autoimmune disease. Time wasn't an issue since every quiz was 1 question you instantly did or didn't understand. That exam tested for talent.
What's much easier, and what most elite schools do, is jam a ton of questions into every exam and write the IQ test.
This theory was mainly used for discrimination, but there might have been a small grain of truth. Some people will do the right thing because they see that society functions only if most people behave in the common interest. Some people only do the right thing because they fear consequences, and fear of God can be good enough for people who are firmly convinced they're too smart to be caught by anyone else. Perhaps a decline in religion has unfettered the inherently amoral. In reality, it may just have been that enough bankers started doing amoral things that the rest decided they had to as well in order to keep up.
We might be seeing something similar in U.S. colleges. Some students have no fear of the consequences of being caught in a lie, and many more are simply reacting to seeing obvious frauds being rewarded with real advantages. Prof's and TA's are probably quite aware of what's going on, but are afraid to call it out. If a prof denies a student's bogus disability entitlements they could be sued or fired.
So, how do you walk this back? Unlike finance scams, it's relatively easy to spot fake disabilities. Universities could do their own assessments instead of relying on whatever outside doctors students can get to say they have a disability. They could strongly support profs who take action against fakers. This may cost them donations from upset parents, but failure to reign the fakery in could tarnish the brand of elite colleges and, eventually, cost them even more. Then again, it may already be the case that an ivy league degree says more about connections than competence.
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Edit:
I just wanted to add that I really dislike the above theory and in no way endorse hiring religious people over non-religious people. In my experience, religious people are every bit as good as rationalizing immoral behaviour as everyone else, and are frequently even better at it.
The point I was trying to drive at is that some people act badly when there is no accountability. It's clear that both investment bankers and college kids need to be policed, but it's comparatively easy to catch college kids faking disabilities.
The SCOTUS delayed many times in rendering a ruling on the Trump tariffs despite having clerks and other staff to write the statements and abundant time.
People have very high expectations placed on students for some reason, and then the opposite for jobs especially as prestige of the job goes up.
if the religious part bothers you, substitute "willing to forgo benefits on principle rather than economic and utilitarian calculation, despite recognizing the prisoners dilemma of doing so"
not as snappy, but maybe less emotionally charged
https://founders.archives.gov/documents/Adams/99-02-02-3102
He didn't intend it as political analysis, but it nonetheless makes a fine warning: "But should the People of America, once become capable of that deep simulation towards one another and towards foreign nations [...] this Country will be the most miserable Habitation in the World."
He's pretty clear that this had already affected every other country, and it seems like he expected us to go that way eventually. I don't think any set of laws will govern a people who would rather defeat their opponents than live together.
Reality has become exactly like in T.S. Eliot's "The Hollow Men."
> Children learn from the role models we elevate
University administrations are not the role models we elevate. The behaviour of the administration that you're describing is for the same / similar reasons as what TSiege is saying.
Grifting turtles all the way down.
Wrong is wrong. Doesn't matter if you're following role models or leaders. Everyone is responsible for their own decisions and actions. You don't have to pick just one group to blame and let everyone else off the hook.
Do you want future moral leaders? Prosecute Trump, Epstein friends, Musk, Bovino, Thiel and investigate corruption om supreme court. Investigate cops murdering citizens too. Investigate wall street.
Also, article did not claimed they are getting advantages on tests, just that they claim disability. There were no data on test advantages.
The biggest issue seemed to be ability to claim food intolerance to avoid mandatory cantine eating - so they get cheaper food. Plus some dorm room allocation issue.
The fish rots from the head, and any discussion of this topic that doesn't at least touch upon the open corruption of our society's most powerful role models is prima facie dishonest.
Also this article is a dupe: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46921569
* widespread medical malpractice assigning disabilities to healthy individuals - extending to modification of the criteria for diagnosis - and 2 in 5 Stanford students are dishonest individuals
* or maybe these people have these conditions but they aren't disabling and are actually enabling
So one thing we could do is give neuro-typical people more accommodations so that they have are on a level playing field with neuro-divergent people. A similar enough ratio is what we see for left-handedness in sports, which leads to a lot of science looking into why left-handedness is an advantage. Maybe neuro-divergence is an advantage. In sport, we don't care about leveling the field, but here we do, so we should.
I think this is a stupid rule taught so that the privileged can game the systems but the vast majority of people don’t reap any benefits.
I have a rather contrarian view. If you have a symbiotic relationship (mostly friends and family) don’t game the system. If you have an adversarial relationship (employer, school, etc) where an entity has a lot more power over you than you have over them - feel free to game. People running these places treat you as a number. There is no shame in gaming it.
When someone lies about having a disability to get priority housing access, they're competing against students who have real disabilities.
When someone cheats on exams, they throw the curve off for students who aren't cheating.
"I often think back to that conversation with my upperclassman friend. She wasn’t proud of gaming the system and she wasn’t ashamed either. She was simply rational. The university had created a set of incentives and she had simply responded to them.
That’s what strikes me most about the accommodation explosion at Stanford and similar schools. The students aren’t exactly cheating and if they are, can you blame them? Stanford has made gaming the system the logical choice. When accommodations mean the difference between a cramped triple and your own room, when extra test time can boost your grade point average, opting out feels like self-sabotage. Who would make their lives harder when the easiest option is just a 30-minute Zoom call away?"
I don't understand this logic. Many of these students are telling lies and manipulating to get a benefit that wasn't designed for them. In many cases (such as housing priority selection) they're actively taking spots from students with genuine needs. How do you arrive at a conclusion that this isn't cheating?
And why can't we blame them for their own decisions and actions? The university isn't forcing them to do this.
> when extra test time can boost your grade point average, opting out feels like self-sabotage.
Cheating on exams can also boost your grade point average.
I find these attempts to shift blame to anyone but the people making the decisions to be illogical. Let's call it what it is: Many of these students found a way to lie and cheat for personal gain with low or zero chance of getting caught, so they're choosing to do it. It's their choice, though.
How would determine who has genuine needs? Many of these conditions have no definitive tests.