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

reason.com

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

#51

Post by rovr138 »

SilasX wrote: post #37
rovr138 wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

25% of Americans have a disability, https://www.cdc.gov/disability-and-health/media/pdfs/disabil... We don't know what's the percentage broken down by age. If 38% is almost 50%, 25% is almost 38%.

That's over the entire population, which includes the elderly. For the 18-34yo block, it's 8.3%, and you'd probably expect it even lower for ... well, the population that, to put it bluntly, succeeded in life enough to get into Stanford. https://www.census.gov/library/visualizations/2024/comm/disa... Edit: And to clarify, just to be fair, I can accept there are many things that would qualify as "a disability that the…

I would love to have experts look at the data of this self reported community survey vs the CDC's data.

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To the edit, I can agree.

We are talking ultimately what ADA classifies as a dissability. Which is different from what might be needed for driving (as an example).

ADA has requirements. Doctors have their definitions. They're being met.

If a doctor abuses it, then we should be going for the doctors. As was said in another comment, while they are human and susceptible, they also are the ones with the license.

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

#52

Post by mapontosevenths »

bvisness wrote: post #18
pavel_lishin wrote: post #3

> 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…

Being diagnosed with the disorder does not automatically qualify as a disability. This article, and many people in this thread seem not to be able to distinguish between the rising rate of diagnoses, and being disabled or needing accommodation.

I have been diagnosed as being several different types of neuro-divergent, but I am also not qualified as disabled and do not need or want any special dispensation. I would say that I have been relatively successful in life by almost anyone's metrics without it.

There is still an enormous advantage in understanding yourself, even without the expectation of accommodation or medication. I was also, sadly, not diagnosed until my mid-40's.

I would have had a much easier time getting to where I am today if diagnostic criteria and awareness among clinical staff were better when I was younger.

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

#53

Post by alwa »

OGEnthusiast wrote: post #25

American society is at the point where if you don't play these sort of games/tricks, you'll get out-competed by those who do. Bleak.

But, like—isn’t the bleaker thing that that seems so existential of an outcome? The vast majority don’t go to Stanford. The vast majority of those aren’t valedictorian.

And the vast majority of that vast majority’s lives in the US work out, you know, fine—mostly including things like climate-controlled indoor spaces, ample calories, professional medical care, access to some kind of justice system, going their whole life without participating in war…

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

#55

Post by SoftTalker »

p1esk wrote: post #50
OGEnthusiast wrote: post #25

American society is at the point where if you don't play these sort of games/tricks, you'll get out-competed by those who do. Bleak.

Pretty sure it was always like this

No, "disability" used to be something of a stigma. Now it's celebrated, and people proudly identify with it.

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

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

#56

Post by Brybry »

morkalork wrote: post #40
delichon wrote: post #24

If 38% of the top 1% of students have learning disabilities then I'd expect students near the mean to be 100% learning disabled, if those words have any meaning left.

Maybe they're all that academically gifted kinda autism and students near the mean are less likely to be disabled? /s

I know you did /s but in public school gifted programs here the gifted kids have IEPs (a document defining their Individualized Education Program) similar to what is required for special education kids with disabilities.

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

#58

Post by hibikir »

I think there's a non-malicious explanation for a percentage of this.

As I grew up in the 80s, there were two kinds of gifted kids in school: The kind that would ace everything anyway, and the kind that, for a variety of reasons, lacked the regulation abilities to manage the school setting well, with the slow classes and such. A lot of very smart people just failed academically, because the system didn't work for them. Some of those improved their executive function enough as they went past their teenage years, and are now making a lot of money in difficult fields.

So what happens when we do make accomodations to them? That their peaky, gifted performance comes out, they don't get ejected by the school systems anywhere near as often as they were before, and now end up in top institutions. Because they really are both very smart and disabled at the same time.

you can even see this in tech workplaces: The percentages of workers that are neurodivergent is much higher than usual, but it's not as if tech hires them out of compassion, but because there's a big cadre or neurodivergent people that are just in the line where they are very productive workers anyway. So it should be no surprise that in instutitutions searching for performance, the number of people that qualify for affordances for certain mental disabilities just goes way up.

That's not to say that there cannot be people that are just cheating, but it doesn't take much time in a class with gifted kids to realize that no, it's not just cheating. You can find someone, say, suffering in a dialectic-centric english class, where just following the conversation is a problem, while they are outright bored with the highest difficulty technical AP classes available, because they find them very easy.

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

#59

Post by pavon »

This focuses on students seeking diagnoses. But I would expect most of them have already been diagnosed long before college. Parents with high expectations of their children are more likely to seek diagnoses. If you've spent your childhood being told you are ADHD and on Ritalin, then it is natural you would self-identify as such in college.

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

#60

Post by Rebuff5007 »

OGEnthusiast wrote: post #25

American society is at the point where if you don't play these sort of games/tricks, you'll get out-competed by those who do. Bleak.

Thats true, but I think the blame is more on "American society" and not the kids working through the system.

50 years ago, college was cheaper. From what I understand getting jobs if you had a college degree was much easier. Social media didn't exist and people weren't connected to a universe of commentary 24/7. Kids are dealing with all this stuff, and if requesting a "disability accommodation" is helping them through it, that seems fine?

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