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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?

#541

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah I suspect that people are being over-diagnosed, but I also suspect we're catching dramatically more cases than we were previously. An overcorrection if you will.

Suspecting is reasonable. So is suspecting it is under-diagnosed. 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.

I don't believe the diagnoses are fake. I didn't rant. I said I suspect. In fact I am diagnosed myself and have benefited from the diagnosis.

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

#542

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do you have children? 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.

>> But for lack of playing such games, I saw my children’s opportunities slip away. Examples? I most certainly don't play these games and believe my kids are further along in developing the most valuable, lasting characteristic: grit. So many things in life require you to grind, and the only way to gain this is to practice.

>So many things in life require you to grind, and the only way to gain this is to practice.

getting a kid who doesn't deserve entry to pass a prestige university with as little effort as possible is an effort to short-circuit that concept.

many games to play in this world.

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

#543
post #147

Amongst groups for extremely gifted kids I’ve seen, well over half are neurodivergent. It’s a well understood issue in gifted kids psychology. When these kids are accommodated appropriately they ace their classes, and when not, they fail out entirely, even at the most basic levels of education. So the statistics mentioned in the article are not necessarily inconsistent with what we’d expect, since Stanford is a highl…

What is neurodivergent though? If it’s a third of people, you can probably deem that normal.

A third is about as common as astigmatism in >50 year olds (like me, for instance!) I wear glasses to accommodate this disability, and as a result have nearly no practical problems due to it.

I don't think a problem having a high frequency means that we should decide it doesn't matter or need rectification.

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

#544
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…

Did anyone else actually enjoy dorm life? I was a freshman some years ago, so maybe it’s generational, but it was a very fond time.

I guess it’s probably high variance. My roomate was a great dude. I can easily see how it could go the other way.

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

#545
post #497

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> the original article is factually incorrect. Accommodations at Stanford are only 25% of students, according to their website, and that includes every possible kind of accommodation, The original article said 38% students are registered with the disability office, not that 38% of students have accommodations. Not all students registered with the disability office receive accommodations all of the time. 25% is still…

> The number of public universities is in the 3-4% range. The National Center for Education Statistics disagrees with 3-4%. In 2019–20, some 21 percent of undergraduates and 11 percent of postbaccalaureate students reported having a disability. . . https://nces.ed.gov/fastfacts/display.asp?id=60

That's a different statistic. Not all students who report having a disability on a survey will be registered with their school's disability office.

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

#546
I was recently wondering that since in the US the race is declarative and such a big thing, why don't people self declare being ?

If this brings you points at entey exams or similar bonuses - why not (mis)using that mechanism?

Or maybe I have as a European the wrong impression about positive discrimination based on race in universities? (I do not nit jave recent data, just remember that people mentioned that they did not play the "race card" to be admitted)

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

#547

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Your link doesn't say "25%". It's also not an official, up-to-date statistics resource. It's website copy for the office of accessible education The "1 in 4" number has been there as far back as Wayback Machine has that paged archived (2023): http://web.archive.org/web/20230628165315/https://oae.stanfo... So it's definitely not a precise statistic, and it's likely out of date.

1 in 4 is 25% it's on their website. Along with all the other details. where is 38% coming from that is a better source than Stanford's own website. At a minumum the article should have said where they got that number and why it disagrees with Stanford's own number. And again, it includes every possible kind of accommodation under the sun. Which is totally fine and not an issue of any kind.

> 1 in 4 is 25%

N in M fractions are used in casual copy to convey an approximate value. Finding a "1 in 4" number on a dated website does not mean that the current number is literally 25%.

It's an approximation and not meant to be taken as a precise value. They're not going to update the website to "26 out of 100" if the number changes.

Citing an old, approximate number in some non-specific website copy does not invalidate anything.

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

#548
post #335
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…

They lead with the headline that most of these students have a mental health disability - particularly ADHD. Is it surprising that legalized Amphetamines drive teenagers to higher performance for a short period in their lives? Adderall and other amphetamines only have problems with long term usage. It should be expected that some portion of the teenage population sees a net-benefit from Amphetamines for the duration…

there is so much wrong with the first few paragraphs of this article

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.

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

#549
post #385

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Dyslexia isn’t curable. It doesn’t magically go away with help, techniques, or accommodations —- it just becomes more manageable. He/she probably wouldn’t have gotten into an elite university without that help through childhood.

I am aware, my daughter has Dyslexia. But this is not a thread about elementary school accommodations, it is about university level accommodations. The question is why the author implies he needs the same or similar accommodations at 20ish that he did at 5ish. Or does he?

You incorrectly drew an implication. The authors words only actually imply that some accommodations are still needed, not that they are the same accommodations.

This conclusion is obvious given that the underlying condition is not curable.

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

#550

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Tests usually measure lots of things, and speed and accuracy / fluency in the topic is one. Why are you trying to measure speed though? I can't think of any situation where someone was like: you have exactly 1 minute to integrate this function, or else. Fluency yes, but speed is a poor proxy for fluency.

Why is it a poor proxy? Someone who really understands the concepts and has the aptitude for it will get answers more quickly than someone who is shakier on it. The person who groks it less may be able to get to the answer, but needs to spend more time working through the problem. They're less good at calculus and should get a lower grade! Maybe they shouldn't fail Calc 101, but may deserve a B or (the horror) a C. M…

My middle school aged child was recently diagnosed with learning disorders around processing, specifically with written language and math, which means even though he might know the material well it will take him a long time to do things we take for granted like reading and writing. But, he does much much better with recall and speed when transmitting and testing his knowledge orally. He's awful with spelling and phonemes, but his vocabulary is above grade level. For kids like him, the time aspect is not necessarily correlated to subject mastery.
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