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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?

#601

Post by powerclue »

skeeter2020 wrote: post #512
powerclue wrote: post #222

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The article is pretty clearly someone trying to drag disability on to the stage of the culture war because it's another group that's easy to other, imo.

This is the common gag reflex, but multiple things can be true at the same time; there can be a greater need for support of disabled persons AND a shocking abuse of the systems by priviledged students. Ditto for the need to support women & minorities at the same time as white males are doing poorly and need help.

I don't think I disagree, and I don't think I suggested that couldn't be the case.

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

#602

Post by powerclue »

missedthecue wrote: post #418
pelorat wrote: post #286

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Easily wayyy more than that given both the loosening standards of what a disability is combined with over-diagnosis. But I get your sentiment. When I was a kid, disabled meant you were in a wheelchair or needed someone to physically feed you, and now it means you have an Adderall prescription.

Sounds like the old definition was missing a lot of people with disabilities.

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

#603

Post by adolph »

Aurornis wrote: post #545
adolph wrote: post #497

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

Fair enough. I formerly went through large schools' reported numbers, which isn't the most straightforward thing to find. UT Austin has 4,299 registered Spring of 2025, which is 12.9% of a 55k student population. Ohio has 5,724 of a total of 66,901, so 8%. FSU is ~5,000 of ~55,000: 10%. These are all much higher than the article's claim but definitely lower than the NCES survey.

https://disability.utexas.edu/statistics/

https://irp.osu.edu/sites/default/files/documents/2025/01/20...

https://dsst.fsu.edu/oas

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

#604

Post by Quothling »

guizadillas wrote: post #225

It's funny how upset most comments are with the realization that a lot more people are disabled while most of the users in HN are probably on the spectrum

I grew up in a Danish town of 20.000 people and two schools. In my school there were 3 dyslexic children. They went to the "special" class 4 hours a week. I'm not sure what to call it, "special" isn't the right word, but it's not just because my English is not sufficient to come up with the right name. It's because this was the place they put all the children with what we'd call disabilities today. Some of the students in the class were only in that class, others like my dyslexic classmate only went to the class those 4 hours a week. It was also a full age range from 0-9th grades. As you might imagine it didn't exactly work.

Today we know that 10% of the population is dyslexic. So those 3 children should've actually been 80. Some of those 77 children could be in the group of adults who can't read.

What is interesting to me is that you rarely see people rant about the dyslexic the way you see people talking about something like ADHD.

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

#605

Post by ThrowMeAway1618 »

pelorat wrote: post #297
smcg wrote: post #156

I went to an elite school. I had undiagnosed depression and ADHD and I almost failed out. I don't think I needed more time on tests but I definitely needed medication and counseling. The counseling resources available at the time were not adequate and medication was difficult to get.

An "elite school" is not for everyone because everyone is different. You did not need medication and counseling. What you needed was a regular public college.

Perhaps you should stick to galactic history, Janov.

Psychology doesn't seem your strong suit (unsurprising, given your origins and background).

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

#606

Post by frumplestlatz »

Aurornis wrote: post #392
ultrarunner wrote: post #373

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Adderall and other amphetamines only have problems with long term usage. My research was done a long time ago. I understood Ritalin to have mild neurotoxic effects, but Adderall et al to be essentially harmless. Do you have a source for the benefits giving way to problems long-term? Regardless, your overall point is interesting. Presumably, these drugs are (ridiculously tightly) controlled to prevent society-wide h…

> I understood Ritalin to have mild neurotoxic effects, but Adderall et al to be essentially harmless. There is no conclusive research on humans, but you have these backwards. Ritalin (methylphenidate) is thought to have less risk for neurotoxicity than Adderall (amphetamine). Amphetamine enters the neuron and disrupts some internal functions as part of its mechanism of action, while Ritalin does not. Both drugs will…

> The early motivation-enhancing effects don't last very long.

They lasted me 12 years so far. Same dosage.

> The Adderall group rates themselves as having done much better, despite performing the same on the test.

A feeling of euphoria means your dosage is too high, and people without ADHD probably shouldn’t take these drugs.

If the studies involved people that were on the drugs normally, it’s also not a particularly surprising result. The drugs induce a very real chemical dependency, and you will not feel like yourself or that you are performing when you are off of them.

That is honestly my only complaint. Without the drug, I am essentially a vegetable. If I go cold turkey, I can barely stay awake. However, it’s still a lot better than my life was before.

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

#607

Post by ajsnigrutin »

bawolff wrote: post #434
Aurornis wrote: post #367

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The original article which is linked in this post goes into much better detail: https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/2026/01/elite-universit... Schools and universities have made accommodations a priority for decades. It started with good intentions, but parents and students alike have noticed that it's both a) easy to qualify for a disability and b) provides significant academic advantages if you do. Another big acc…

> Another big accommodation request is extra time on tests. Maybe the real problem is we are testing people on how fast they can do something not if they can do something. In general, being good at academics require you to think carefully not quickly. I suspect there is a correlation between people who think things through and people who do well in school.

I mean... usually those tests check the correctness of answers too, so you're comparing students under the same circumstances, evaluating how much (writing, calculations.... whatever) they're able to do, correctly of course, within an alotted time period. If someone can correctly solve 17 math problems in that time and someone else can do 21, the second one is "better" than the first, since they're both faster and their answers are still correct.

They could extend the test time for everyone, but in reality, you won't get many time extensions in real life, where speed is indeed a factor.

If someone can do 21 correct answers in an hour and someone else needed two hours to do the same, due to a faked disability, it's unfair both to the 1-hour student and an actually disabled student who might be missing a hand and needing more time to write/type with a prosthetic.

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

#608

Post by kenjackson »

Aurornis wrote: post #367
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…

The original article which is linked in this post goes into much better detail: https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/2026/01/elite-universit... Schools and universities have made accommodations a priority for decades. It started with good intentions, but parents and students alike have noticed that it's both a) easy to qualify for a disability and b) provides significant academic advantages if you do. Another big acc…

On "parents and students alike have noticed that it's both a) easy to qualify for a disability" -- for the purposes of standardized testing we've found it extremely difficult and feedback we've heard from others on message boards echoes our experience.

I do feel like a test that is so focused on speed rather than ability seems like it loses a lot of its utility. There's a bunch of math I can't do. It doesn't matter if you give me an hour or two -- I won't be able to do it. But distinguishing between the ability to solve a problem in 30s versus 40s seems to be missing the point.

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

#609

Post by andrewrn »

lurking_swe wrote: post #596
andrewrn wrote: post #544

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

i remember being woken up at 3am by him vomiting in the middle of the room. In the morning he used my swiffer to clean up his vomit. I told him to keep the swiffer . On the bright side, i met my spouse and we’ve been together for 10+ years so not all bad lol.

Yeah fair fair. It's high variance. My roommate once had a bunch of his highschool friends over for a weekend and one of them sleep-peed onto my roommate's stack of books.

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

#610

Post by IgorPartola »

tomrod wrote: post #342
IgorPartola wrote: post #310

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I worked in residential life while in college and can tell you that placing freshmen in singles is a horrible idea. It leads to isolation and lets mental health issues fester. Some need it but you do not want to place anyone who doesn’t into a room alone especially in their first year.

Meh. I think you're overstating it. To meet your anecdata, I had both the first college year, and single > double by a large margin.

I would not classify it as anecdata. This was research backed policy adopted by most US universities. Residential life and the Dean of Students office are usually doing a lot to cooperate with other universities. This part of US colleges is not competing with each other so they routinely share data, go to conferences together multiple times a year, and res. life directors move from college to college every few years so they all know each other incredibly well.

The point is that everyone who gets a single is super happy about it the same way that a drug addict is always happy when they get their drug of choice for free: of course it’s great. Of course it isn’t the best thing for you in the long run. I say this as someone who hated being in a double my first year and spent the next three in a single.

As far as I am concerned having apartments of 4-8 students where each has their own small room but shares a common space is ideal. But usually this is reserved for sophomore year and later.

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