Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

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

reason.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

631–640 of 1001 posts

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

#631

Post by dathinab »

BobaFloutist wrote: post #584
dathinab wrote: post #548

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

>ADHD sometimes comes with hyper focus, which if it manifest in the right way can help you in university. "Hyperfocus" is a clinical term for focus that is excessive enough to be an impairment. People often conflate it with the term "Special interest" used for Autism, but it's completely different, it refers to the inability to pull focus away from something despite wanting and needing to. It is, definitionally, with…

yes I don't mean "special interest"

and I'm aware that people with ADHD don't really have any way to direct it

and that it can easily lead to them neglecting everything from them self, over work to social relationships

so it will help more then it hurts in university

but it still can matter before, even if it's just a parent mistaking a hyper focus on some science topic with a special interest in it and then exposing you to more science related stuff earlier one in life

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

#632

Post by jaredklewis »

ajsnigrutin wrote: post #617
jaredklewis wrote: post #439

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Also if a test is time constrained it's easier to mark. Give a failing student 8 hours and they'll write 30 pages of nonsense. Sure that makes sense to me, but I don't see why this would not also apply to ADHD students or any other group. And of course, there needs to be some time limit. All I am saying is, instead of having a group that gets one hour and another group that gets two hours, just give everyone two ho…

> All I am saying is, instead of having a group that gets one hour and another group that gets two hours, just give everyone two hours. This means that someone fully abled can think about and solve problems for 1h and 50 minutes, and use 10 minutes to physically write/type the answers, and someone with a disability (eg. missing a hand, using a prosthetic) only gets eg. one hour to solve the problems and one hour to w…

Those examples seem like reasonable, narrowly tailored accomodations to me. But the article linked in the parent comment says:

> The increase is driven by more young people getting diagnosed with conditions such as ADHD, anxiety, and depression, and by universities making the process of getting accommodations easier.

I think these disabilities are more complex than the broken hand and blindness examples for reasons I commented on elsewhere in this thread. In your example, a student with depression or clinical anxiety presumably only needs the same 10 minutes to write/type the answers as all the other students. Which means the extra time is added for them to "think about and solve problems." That seems fundamentally different to me than the broken hand example.

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

#633

Post by HDThoreaun »

aynyc wrote: post #78

I don't know about Stanford students' actual disability, so I can't say much to that. I went to shitty high school and decent middle school in relatively poor middle class neighborhood. Now, I live in a wealthy school district. The way parents in the two different neighborhood treat "learning disability" is mind blowing. In my current school district, IEP (Individual Education Program) is assigned to students that ne…

> Please note that, this doesn't take away resource for regular kids, in fact, classrooms with IEP student get more teachers so everyone in that class benefits.

There is a limited amount of money in the school system. When resources are assigned to one place they are taken away from somewhere else. The kids in the class without IEP students are getting boned by this policy.

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

#634

Post by bawolff »

jaredklewis wrote: post #482
bawolff wrote: post #450

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> An "A" in calculus should mean that you can do calculus and that evaluation should be independent of your own strengths If you can't do calculus, extra time is not going to help you. Its not like an extra 30 minutes in a closed room environment is going to let you rederrive calculus from first principles. The theory behind these accomedations is that certain people are disadvantaged in ways that have nothing to do…

The braille example you give makes absolutely perfect sense. The blind student is being evaluated same as the other students and the accommodation given to the blind student (a Braille version of the test) would be of no use to the other students. But extra test time is fundamentally different, as it would be of value to anyone taking the test. If getting the problems in Braille helps the student demonstrate their ab…

> But extra test time is fundamentally different, as it would be of value to anyone taking the test.

That depends on how the test is designed.

Some tests have more material than anyone can hope to finish. Extra time is always valuable in such a test.

However that type of test is generally bad because it more measures speed then skill.

Most tests are designed so the average person is able to finish all the questions. In those tests more time for the average person is not helpful. They have already done it. Sure they could maybe redo all the questions, but there is very diminishing returns.

If the extra 30 minutes improves someone who needs the accomedation's score by 50%, and increases the average student's score by 2% or even not at all, clearly the same thing isn't going on.

So i would disagree that extra time helps everyone.

Just think about it - when was the last time you had a final exam where literally every person handed in the exam at the last moment. When i was in school, the vast majority of people handed in their exam before the time limit.

> why don't we just give it to all students then?

I actually think we should. Requiring people to get special accomedations biases the system to people comfortable with doing that. We should just let everyone get the time they need.

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

#635

Post by JCharante »

lumost wrote: post #394
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 went to university at a time that Adderall was commonplace, and am now old enough to see how it turned out for the individuals. At college, it was common for students to illicitly purchase Adderall to use as a stimulate to cram for a test/paper etc. It was likewise common for students to abuse these drugs by taking pills at a faster than prescribed pace to work for 48 hours straight amongst other habits. In the wor…

I prefer to cycle between addictions of modafinil and caffeine, you shouldn't chronically use 1 drug forever

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

#636

Post by felipeerias »

kenjackson wrote: post #612
ajsnigrutin wrote: post #607

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 th…

But where is that level of speed distinction important? I just don't know anywhere where being 10% faster translates into much actual real value. If you can write a function in five minutes and it takes this other person 5.5 minutes -- do you really view that as the key difference in ability? Even in time constrained situations, compute/processing speed is almost never the issue.

In this context, time constraints are measured in hours and are very informative regarding the student’s capacity to prioritise, plan and carry out their work under pressure.

It is actually very informative when one person can

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

#637

Post by bawolff »

HDThoreaun wrote: post #614
jbullock35 wrote: post #473

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> In general, being good at academics require you to think carefully not quickly. Yes, but to go even further: timed tests often test, in part, your ability to handwrite quickly rather than slowly. There is great variation in handwriting speed — I saw it as a student and as a professor — and in classrooms, we should no more be testing students for handwriting speed than we should be testing them on athletic ability.…

I can not think of a single test I have ever taken where I could be limited by handwriting speed. Most of the time on tests is spent thinking, not writing.

I had a test once where we had to do RSA by hand (with 4 digit numbers), no calculators allowed. There was a lot of handwriting on scrap pieces of paper.

Do humanities have to do handwritten essay tests in the modern world. I had to do those in middle school/high school. No idea if that is still a thing.

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

#638

Post by WalterBright »

Phithagoras wrote: post #433
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…

In a high stakes, challenging environment, every human weakness possible becomes a huge, career impeding liability. Very few people are truly all-around talented. If you are a Stanford level scientist, it doesn't take a lot of anxiety to make it difficult to compete with other Stanford level scientists who don't have any anxiety. Without accommodations, you could still be a very successful scientist after going to a…

> putting water on the toothbrush before toothpaste

Wat? I had no idea I had a disability!

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

#639

Post by JCharante »

andrewrn wrote: post #544
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…

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 had a bad roommate who when I asked the people in the house to turn the music down he would tell them to turn it up, and he constantly had annoying guests in our tiny room. Fuck Patrick you know who you are..

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

#640

Post by piperswe »

antinomicus wrote: post #585
piperswe wrote: post #524

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In my experience, Adderall does lose effectiveness but Vyvanse is much hardier. I’ve been receiving treatment for ADHD for about 4 years. My current Vyvanse dose is marginally higher than my original Adderall dose, but I’m considering reducing it down to below my original Adderall dose. Cognitive behavioral therapy does excel at treating ADHD! But 5 years of therapy is what, 16 times more expensive than 5 years of me…

But adderall and vyvanse aren’t the same drug at all. You cannot directly compare dosages. 50mg of vyvanse is roughly equivalent to 20mg of adderall. As a prodrug, Vyvanse must be processed by the liver for it to function.

Indeed. That's why I'm underscoring that my Vyvanse dosage (20mg) is only midly higher than my Adderall dose was a few years ago (15mg).
Post reply on HN