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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?

#691

Post by Spooky23 »

antisthenes wrote: post #681
Aurornis wrote: post #558

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Being diagnosed doesn't immediately mean you should be accommodated. This is the loophole. Universities aren't the ones diagnosing, they're the ones accommodating. The current meta-game is for parents and students to share notes about which doctors will diagnose easily. Between word of mouth and searches on Reddit, it's not that hard to find doctors in any metro area who will provide diagnoses and accommodation req…

Wow. Great to know we're basically raising an entire generation without any integrity. Can't wait to be in a nursing home where all the staff are trying to meta-game for lowest amount of responsibility rather than caring for the elderly. And believe me, I'm the last person to disparage the truly disabled or those down on their luck. But 38% in a developed country is just straight up insane. Not to mention that if you…

We’re a society of assholes. The comment above suggests selling accommodation requests.

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

#692

Post by chemotaxis »

antisthenes wrote: post #681
Aurornis wrote: post #558

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Being diagnosed doesn't immediately mean you should be accommodated. This is the loophole. Universities aren't the ones diagnosing, they're the ones accommodating. The current meta-game is for parents and students to share notes about which doctors will diagnose easily. Between word of mouth and searches on Reddit, it's not that hard to find doctors in any metro area who will provide diagnoses and accommodation req…

Wow. Great to know we're basically raising an entire generation without any integrity. Can't wait to be in a nursing home where all the staff are trying to meta-game for lowest amount of responsibility rather than caring for the elderly. And believe me, I'm the last person to disparage the truly disabled or those down on their luck. But 38% in a developed country is just straight up insane. Not to mention that if you…

Better yet, many of the graduates will become politicians, journalists, or prominent tech figures who will be pontificating about morality and regulating it for others.

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

#693

Post by godelski »

WalterBright wrote: post #652
bawolff wrote: post #434

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

Caltech had timed exams (2-3 hours) and infinite time exams, at the discretion of the professor. The students hated the infinite time ones, because nobody knew how much time other students spent on the test so one felt obliged to spend inordinate amounts of time on it. Besides, if you couldn't solve the exam problems in 2 hours, you simply didn't know the material.

In the upper division of my undergrad physics degree that was really common. Open book, open everything except peers. I personally loved those exams and my grades went way up. I could walk away for a few minutes if I was stuck, maybe grab a beer to relax, and get back and solve the problems. But I think this is much harder to do and getting even more difficult. I was at a small university and you really couldn't google the answers. It was really easy to write google proof questions. But a key part was that the classes were small, so it was pretty obvious if people were cheating.

I went to grad school in CS after a few years of work and when I taught I centered the classes around projects. This was more difficult in lower division classes but very effective in upper. But it is more work on the person running the class.

I don't think there's a clear solution that can be applied to all fields or all classes, but I do think it is important people rethink how to do things.

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

#694

Post by gregw2 »

jonfromsf wrote: post #478

I wouldn't be surprised if 80% of Stanford students are anxious or depressed. Isn't everybody, especially young kids who have spent the last decade going through the meat grinder of prepping for elite college admissions?

This.

Many emotional problems that are highly dysfunctional can be missed or masked by raw intelligence until a certain higher level of intellectual competition or pressure is present.

Having participated in frequent academic competitions in high school in a top-5-biggest metropolitan area in the US, there was one guy in my era who pretty much won city-wide awards in any subject he touched all the time. So bright. He got into an elite college and spiraled out and dropped out for what, in hindsight I'd armchair-diagnose, were a mix of ADHD/Autistic/anxiety-oriented tendencies that collided with online gaming that hadn't caused failures in earlier environments for him.

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

#695

Post by astrange »

apexalpha wrote: post #266

My father is a super stubborn Dutch guy. Needs to see proof of something 10 times before he changes a long held believe. Long time ago something came up like this in the Netherlands. Some massive, unexplained increase in disability. I asked how could this ever be possible? He asked: "Are any of the disabilities that show a massive increase not objectively measurable but still eligible for subsidies? At the time I tho…

Not exactly the right question, because you probably can't explain a change over time with a factor that hasn't changed in that time.

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

#696

Post by stanford_labrat »

antisthenes wrote: post #681
Aurornis wrote: post #558

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Being diagnosed doesn't immediately mean you should be accommodated. This is the loophole. Universities aren't the ones diagnosing, they're the ones accommodating. The current meta-game is for parents and students to share notes about which doctors will diagnose easily. Between word of mouth and searches on Reddit, it's not that hard to find doctors in any metro area who will provide diagnoses and accommodation req…

Wow. Great to know we're basically raising an entire generation without any integrity. Can't wait to be in a nursing home where all the staff are trying to meta-game for lowest amount of responsibility rather than caring for the elderly. And believe me, I'm the last person to disparage the truly disabled or those down on their luck. But 38% in a developed country is just straight up insane. Not to mention that if you…

I think about this quite a lot. I’ve come to the conclusion that in the past acting with integrity was rewarded and lacking integrity was punished.

In 2025 it seems integrity is meaningless, “winning” is all that matters. Particularly, you are not punished for acting without integrity but definitely “punished” for having it.

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

#697

Post by OhioMan2943 »

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

There's something a little ironic about calling every user on a website disabled on an article about overdiagnosing disability

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

#698

Post by drivebyhooting »

sleazebreeze wrote: post #680
drivebyhooting wrote: post #553

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Children were passed up for elementary school admissions. Whereas the schmoozers and their kids got in. I can’t provide proper education and practice. There is no grit or grind. They’re just falling further and further behind the ones who actually got access to good schools and teachers. One who tested highly gifted (145 IQ) after years of educational neglect now tests at 120. It’s pathetic. And even if I spend all m…

Schmoozers learned grit and grind? That's opposite of my experience and observations. What role do you play in the educational neglect? I am not sure I understand the decline here.

145 -> 120 IQ decline

Because I can’t access good schools and teachers. Because I didn’t schmooze to the admissions directors and other gate keepers.

I should’ve worn better clothes, driven a Porsche, and displayed the right shibboleths. Except that even now I’m too immature and stupid to know what they are.

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

#699

Post by BeetleB »

sleazebreeze wrote: post #680
drivebyhooting wrote: post #553

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Children were passed up for elementary school admissions. Whereas the schmoozers and their kids got in. I can’t provide proper education and practice. There is no grit or grind. They’re just falling further and further behind the ones who actually got access to good schools and teachers. One who tested highly gifted (145 IQ) after years of educational neglect now tests at 120. It’s pathetic. And even if I spend all m…

Schmoozers learned grit and grind? That's opposite of my experience and observations. What role do you play in the educational neglect? I am not sure I understand the decline here.

> What role do you play in the educational neglect?

Not the person you're responding to, but that's uncalled for.

There are many variables that go into a child's development. The parents are merely one of them. They can do their best and things can still go south.

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

#700

Post by ineedasername »

Lots to unpack in this so this following isn’t representative of my view on all of the article:

Cheating? Really? There’s a passing reference to getting an accommodation if partly through convenience as cheating. This throwaway line holds a lot of the problems of education in it. It denotes a view where education is less about learning than point scoring. Getting an accommodation for an extra day on a project is no more cheating than if a student asked for an extension.

Plenty of other accommodations, though maybe not all, are similarly not-cheating. It’s not cheating. It’s also not fair but so what? Put aside the system burdens doing this under the ADA may cause and your left with, what? Students being given more leeway and flexibility to 1) learn and 2) demonstrate that they have learned material.

This should be much less about “omg students taking advantage” and more about about “hmm, maybe this says a lot about how poorly things are currently done and better they could be with more thoughtful design”

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