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

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

#251

Post by only-one1701 »

bee_rider wrote: post #221
lostmsu wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I suppose cheating to get housing benefits is less of a dumpster fuck vs cheating to get ahead of other people in education.

In the context of academics I’d call it manipulating, exploiting or scamming the housing system, rather than cheating. Just because academic cheating is the center-of-gravity for this type of conversation, and, IMO, a much much bigger deal. 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?

This whole comment thread has been a crazy way to find out the ways people justify immoral behavior to themselves.

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

#252

Post by seizethecheese »

lostmsu wrote: post #85
shetaye wrote: post #81

Regarding Stanford specifically, I did not see the number broken down by academic or residential disability (in the underlying Atlantic article). This is relevant, because > Some students get approved for housing accommodations, including single rooms and emotional-support animals. buries the lede, at least for Stanford. It is incredibly commonplace for students to "get an OAE" (Office of Accessible Education) exclus…

I suppose cheating to get housing benefits is less of a dumpster fuck vs cheating to get ahead of other people in education.

I suppose so, but nonetheless it still likely harms the rest of the students who are honest by raising the price of housing for all students.

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

#253

Post by only-one1701 »

RachelF wrote: post #245
MangoToupe wrote: post #107

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I suppose stanford does optimize for cheating, but this still seems excessive

Sadly, society also optimizes for cheating. Meritocracy is a myth. In many ways Stanford is preparing students for the real world by encouraging cheating.

This is what it comes down to

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

#254

Post by powerclue »

esafak wrote: post #144
sureglymop wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Where does the idea/reasoning that highly academically successful students cannot have a disability come from? I would go a step further and say there is probably a high chance that neurodivergent students are more academically successful, iff they did get to that level of education. And it's not impossible that they are overrepresented in that group of people. And people may be intellectually gifted, and yet experie…

Nobody said that. They are saying or insinuating that 38% of successful students are unlikely to be disabled. That certainly was not the case as recently as a decade or two ago. People have not changed drastically, so what gives?

> They said that 38% of successful students are unlikely to be disabled.

Which is an unreasonable claim.

I have a disability that impairs many aspects of my life. I was still capable of getting through college and am successful in my career. Having a disability does not mean you can't do academics.

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

#256

Post by aaronbwebber »

lostmsu wrote: post #85
shetaye wrote: post #81

Regarding Stanford specifically, I did not see the number broken down by academic or residential disability (in the underlying Atlantic article). This is relevant, because > Some students get approved for housing accommodations, including single rooms and emotional-support animals. buries the lede, at least for Stanford. It is incredibly commonplace for students to "get an OAE" (Office of Accessible Education) exclus…

I suppose cheating to get housing benefits is less of a dumpster fuck vs cheating to get ahead of other people in education.

It means that the action we should take in response to this article is "building more dorms with singles" rather than "we need to rethink the way that we are making accommodations for disabilities in educational contexts".

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

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

#257

Post by TuringNYC »

I had neither healthcare coverage in high school nor expensive college consultants. When I got to college (Cornell) all my friends told me they had plenty of extra time on the standardized exam (the SAT) by virtue of doctors letters declaring conditions requiring accommodations. I'm sure some of these were legitimate. But practically everyone I spoke to supposedly had ADHD and resulting accommodations on the SAT. I'm not a MPH or Epidemiologist, but does 80% or 90% of the student population truly have a condition requiring accommodations?

Once 10 or 20% of students are doing this, it isnt unexpected for everyone to start doing it just to get on an even playing field. As usual, the poor students lose out because they cannot afford the doctors or expediters who can facilitate all these things.

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

#258

Post by losvedir »

windows_hater_7 wrote: post #113

I go to one of those elite universities now, and I get academic accommodations. I think some of the increase is truly from greater awareness about disabilities among teachers and parents. My mom was a teacher, and she was the one who first suspected that I had dyslexia. I repeated kindergarten, and I was privileged that my parents were able to afford external educational psychology testing. Socioeconomic status is a…

> and I get academic accommodations

What does this mean, exactly?

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

#259

Post by antupis »

vl wrote: post #154
hibikir wrote: post #58

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 the…

Have you tried Adderall? It gives extreme competitive edge. Just to get legal and easy access to performance-enhancing drugs in elite educational (aka competitive) setting it makes sense to get "disability". And given how loosely these conditions are defined, it's not even cheating in the true sense of the word.

If you have ADHD, for neurotypical people it might feel that you are performing better but results will not improve https://www.cam.ac.uk/research/news/smart-drugs-can-decrease...

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

#260

Post by throwaway314155 »

dunk010 wrote: post #229

The whole thrust of the article is complaining about timed tests and some kids getting more time. That's doubtless unfair if some are overclaiming, but the real solution is to not do timed tests at all - they are only serving to produce an arbitrary bell curve so that some can have higher grades and get better career opportunities. Better to not have a timer at all, and let people's actual ability shine.

Realistically there has to be _some_ time limit. No one is going to sit in a room for 10 hours while you finish your test.
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