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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?

#321

Post by op00to »

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’ve lived with enough nightmare roommates in my college experience to know many people probably have some sort of disability that precludes them from having a roommate.

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

#322

Post by bigfishrunning »

teknopaul wrote: post #142
jfindper wrote: post #124

Earlier quoted context omitted.

One example of a malicious explanation would be: people are lying about having a disability to get some sort of benefits they don’t need, likely at the expense of someone who does need those benefits.

What they get is amphetamines, legally. 38% of stanford kids taking or selling drugs, legally, because they are rich kids: and the poor kids get jail time for buying it off them. Go USA. Wierd that no-one on this thread seems aware of it. There are two standard treatments for adhd: met & dexies midnight runners.

Taking the drugs legally, maybe; it is very much illegal to sell the kind of amphetamines used to treat ADHD. Ritalin, for instance, is a schedule II drug, and it is a felony to sell without a prescription.

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

#323

Post by barchar »

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.

They really don't, and if they did then would it be so bad if people who didn't "need" them took them?

Obviously if there's safety issues but for stimulants unsafe doses will 100% always decrease performance, because they'll affect sleep.

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

#324

Post by ahtihn »

nextos wrote: post #265
MangoToupe wrote: post #107

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

I reviewed incoming applications during one Oxbridge academic application cycle. I raised some serious concerns, nobody listened, and therefore I refuse to take part on that any longer. Basically, lots of students are pretending to be disabled to enhance their chances with applications that are not particularly outstanding, taking spots from truly disabled students. All it takes is a lack of principles, exaggerating…

> Imagine you have poor eyesight requiring a substantial correction, but you can still drive. That's not a disability

It absolutely is a disability! The fact that it's easy to deal with it doesn't change that fact.

I would not find it credible that it has a real impact on education though.

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

#325

Post by Hizonner »

swatcoder wrote: post #117
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…

> people that are just in the line where they are very productive workers anyway Of course, that applies to everybody who achieves a stable career at all. Exceedingly few people (if anyone) are competent and capable at everything, even when you're just talking about basic skills that are handy for common, everyday work. Your doctor may be a incorrigibly terrible driver, your bus driver may pass out at the sight of bl…

> But once you age past the gauntlet of general education that specifically tests all these things, the hope is that you can just sort of flow like water into a valuable enough community role that you can take care of yourself and help some people.

... provided that that gauntlet hasn't stuck a label on you that makes everybody think you're unsuitable for any role, and provided that it's bothered to develop the abilities you do have, and provided that other people aren't being unnecessarily rigid about what roles they'll allow to exist.

Sure, maybe it's stupid to frame it as "THIS counts as being disabled and THAT doesn't"... but we have a world where many systems have decided to do that, and may act slightly less insanely inflexible if they've put you in the "disabled" bucket.

If everybody has some limitations, maybe everybody should get some accommodations. You know, so that they can actually contribute using their strengths. But I'm not holding my breath.

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

#326

Post by Scubabear68 »

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…

So you are a long way from Kindergarten to an elite university. I mention this because it is odd to me that you picked your 4 to 5 year old self to validate why you are getting accommodations in your teens/twenties at a self-described elite university.

My own kids have some issues and varying levels of accommodations, but those have evolved and lessened over time. As you would hope they would! You seem to imply your conditions have not really improved and you need same/similar accommodations now as you did 15 years ago?

Sorry, I am trying not to be offensive here but I am genuinely confused.

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

#327

Post by IshKebab »

pelorat wrote: post #286
powerclue wrote: post #216

That doesn't seem outrageously high for a high cap school? 15-20% of the world is estimated to have a disability. So Stanford population is high, but approximately double the average of a random global population sample. Now, think about the selection pressures Stanford applies. Stanford selects students who are fighting for top academic honors. Those students are dealing with brutal competition, and likely see their…

> 15-20% of the world is estimated to have a disability. Not a chance in hell.

Well... in the UK it's now around 25%:

https://commonslibrary.parliament.uk/research-briefings/cbp-...

However, big caveat - it's self-reported. If you look at how many people get disability benefit it's around 10%.

So whether or not that is true depends entirely on what you mean by "disability" which is obviously not a well defined term.

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

#328

Post by mikkupikku »

This sort of scamming has been going on for a long time, by rich kids particularly. I remember 20 years ago I was surprised to learn that one of my friends, a very clever guy from a very well off family, was supposedly so profoundly disabled that he could do all of his tests overnight and at home. When I asked him how he got such a sweet deal, the answer was "My dad's a doctor."

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

#329

Post by weehobbes »

bigstrat2003 wrote: post #285
weehobbes wrote: post #190

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's a much bigger meta question, like what's even the point of putting timing constraints on any test? Logistically, my kid has to go a testing center at the school during his free period and/or lunch periods for his extra time. I can imagine that if everyone got extra time, it would be a logistical nightmare. But I think the reality is that our educational system had just decided that faster is better and that sp…

> But I think the reality is that our educational system had just decided that faster is better and that speed is a legitimate way to grade and rank students. Which is stupid. That's not stupid. Speed does in fact matter in the real world. To illustrate the point, let's consider an extreme example: what if it took me an entire year to do something that someone else could do in an hour? My results would be so slow tha…

Ok, in the extreme case, that's a fair point. Tests can't be unlimited in length. But I don't think it's actually that tricky to draw the line. If a typical school test is 1 hour during class, just give students the option to come in at lunch or a free period for an extra period for extra time if needed. That seems easy and reasonable enough to me.

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

#330

Post by Jblx2 »

rovr138 wrote: post #64
missinglugnut wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nonsense. This is Stanford. The admissions process filtered for highly academically successful students and then 38% of them claimed a disability which impairs their academic performance. It's bullshit of the most obvious kind.

Example, do you think someone that's hard of hearing can't meet the standard for a 'highly academically successful student"? Or someone that's color blind? Or someone that's blind? Or someone in a wheelchair?

What percentage of Stanford students are in a wheelchair? Are the actual stats publicly available somewhere?
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