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Any functioning individual can go to a therapist and get an immediate diagnosis of an affliction, simply because therapists won't get clients if they don't provide the avenue for being funded by health insurance.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
It is probably not good if nearly half (38% qualifies as nearly half, right?) of students are considered disabled and needing accommodations, right? Surely nearly half of any given public population can't be disabled?
Even 5% would be pushing it at a university. It's easy today to get a diagnosis for something like mild ADHD whether one has it or not, and everyone is on some kind of spectrum. Legitimacy aside, classifying mild, manageable conditions as disabilities that require special accommodations and/or medication is counter-productive long-term.
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Do you dispute the claim that 38% of Stanford students claim a disability so that they can get extra time on tests and other accommodations?
But the question here is, why are these articles being written? This isn’t a crisis. These minor accommodations (which again, most eligible students do not actually pursue) are not crippling the youth of this nation. Reactionary attention-seekers who are looking for clicks write this trash to rile people up for no reason. They don’t explain what’s really going on, it instead they dig up some number that will SHOCK you, and pretend that it means something.
There’s lots to complain about US higher ed. Disagreements over what accommodations to offer to students with ADHD or whatever should not make anyone’s top ten list.
When I was in school, the department that dealt with accessibility could chop the spine off a book, scan it and give you a high quality ebook. I also knew someone who was flagrantly cheating with some test-taking accommodation.
That ebook service was just a nice thing that more people should have taken advantage of. One or two of the professors even subtly encouraged using it to pirate textbooks.
> the current language of the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) allows students to get expansive accommodations with little more than a doctor's note. Isn't that... good? What else would be expected if you have a disability, and need accomodations?
It is probably not good if nearly half (38% qualifies as nearly half, right?) of students are considered disabled and needing accommodations, right? Surely nearly half of any given public population can't be disabled?
> the current language of the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) allows students to get expansive accommodations with little more than a doctor's note. Isn't that... good? What else would be expected if you have a disability, and need accomodations?
Offering accommodations to people with disabilities is good. So you do that.
Then you recognize that not all disabilities that deserve accommodations are obvious so you establish some bureaucratic process that can certify people with these unobvious disabilities so they can receive the accommodations you meant for them to.
But the people you delegate to issue those certificates are... well, they're people. Some of them are not so discerning, some of them are not so bright, some of take pleasure in gaming the system or playing Robin Hood, some of them accept bribes and trade favors, some of them are averse to conflict.
Next thing you know, you've got a lot of people with certificates saying that they have unobvious disabilities that grant them accommodations. Like, way more than you would have expected and some whose certified disabilities are really unobvious.
Might the genuinely good system you put in place have been abused? How can you know? What can you do? And if it's not been gamed, then what the heck is going on that sooooo many people are disabled? That seems like it would reflect some kind of social crisis itself.
> the current language of the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) allows students to get expansive accommodations with little more than a doctor's note. Isn't that... good? What else would be expected if you have a disability, and need accomodations?
The Reason article leaves out some helpful context from the original Atlantic article: > In 2013, the American Psychiatric Association expanded the definition of ADHD. Previously, the threshold for diagnosis had been “clear evidence of clinically significant impairment.” After the release of the DSM‑5, the symptoms needed only to “interfere with, or reduce the quality” of, academic functioning. So it's dramatically e…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
It is probably not good if nearly half (38% qualifies as nearly half, right?) of students are considered disabled and needing accommodations, right? Surely nearly half of any given public population can't be disabled?
They're quite obviously not. They're lying so they can get unlimited time on the test and/or look at their phone. They're smart kids that see a loophole in the system. They will take advantage!