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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?

#871

Post by Tade0 »

AlexandrB wrote: post #535
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.

Do you think the disabled are being helped by letting bad actors trying to get a leg up over their peers abuse accommodations meant for them? On pretty much every "culture war" issue the "left" fails to adequately grapple with bad actors and those that abuse empathetic policies to harm others or unfairly advance themselves. Long term this will be to the great detriment of marginalized groups because societal support…

> Long term this will be to the great detriment of marginalized groups because societal support for these accommodations will erode. It's really frustrating to watch.

Where I'm from there are hardly any accommodations offered for those who are marginalized yet they're stigmatized for using the little help that there is. Also it's usually a loud minority that's against it, as I haven't seen any majority form to abolish it via voting.

Aside from that those who are tasked with executing these policies broadly agree that going after every bad actor is not worth the false positive rate.

I know a couple who became parents young and are now going through college as a family. When they applied for scholarships in their respective universities, one institution accepted immediately, the other is still dragging out the process because for some insane reason there's both an upper and lower income limit for those who apply.

Someone somewhere figured this would somehow deter bad actors so now those who genuinely need help need to jump through additional hoops.

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

#872

Post by jagaerglad »

SanjayMehta wrote: post #761
Phithagoras wrote: post #433

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

[flagged]

terrible take, it's ruined otherwise amazing potential countless times. Just see how over-represented ADHD is in the prison population

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

#873

Post by Fomite »

int_19h wrote: post #719
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…

> If you don't have a disability, you aren't allowed to record lectures Why is that gated like that?

The reasons I've encountered range from philosophy ("Students don't retain knowledge as well if they rely on recordings") to environment ("I want students to be able to ask questions and be wrong without being recorded") to petty ("I don't like lecturing to a half-empty room").

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

#874

Post by eloisant »

jimnotgym wrote: post #840
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…

Presumably the University could do their own assessment to see what is appropriate? Not just rely on a note?

Admin staff or teachers of the university are not entitled to assess that.

That would mean the university hiring doctors, or at least paying a doctor to do the test.

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

#875

Post by LiKao »

koolba wrote: post #754
wisty wrote: post #511

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There can be a genuine need to make it fair. Some students with anxiety can take 10 minutes to read the first question, then are fine. ASD could mean slower uptake as they figure out the exam format. So let's say you have a generally fair time bonus for mild (clinical) anxiety. The issue is that it's fair for the average mild anxiety, it's an advantage if a student has extremely mild anxiety. As you say, hopefully th…

> So let's say you have a generally fair time bonus for mild (clinical) anxiety. The issue is that it's fair for the average mild anxiety, it's an advantage if a student has extremely mild anxiety. We might as well make races longer for athletes with longer legs. It’s unfair to the ones with shorter legs to have to move them more often.

Well, that is kind of what we do.

We look at the range of lengths that is typical for legs. And all these get to compete under typical conditions.

Now let's say someone has a leg length that is fairly outside of the typical range. Let's say someone has a leg length of zero. We let these athletes compete with each other as well with different conditions, but we don't really compare the results from the typical to the atypical group.

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

#877

Post by polotics »

Spooky23 wrote: post #690
koolba wrote: post #674

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> There are now also online telehealth services that don't hide the fact that this is one of their services. You pay their (cash only, please) fee and they'll make sure you get your letter. The same thing is happening with "emotional support animal" letters. This used to be a thing with medical marijuana as well (maybe still is?). The answer is for schools to grab their share of this money by selling each of these ac…

Or just operate so that everyone gets the academic benefits. My roommate in the 90s was ahead of the curve, he memorized the Cosmo quiz “do you have ADD” went to the student center, got a script that he sold or snorted, and got to take his test in a comfortable room at a time scheduled centrally. Just randomize assignments to rooms all over campus.

Oh wow snorted? Did you keep in touch how well is he doing now? I suspect he's not doing so well with the brain damage and the likely switch to other substances.

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

#878

Post by yieldcrv »

> Ironically, the very schools that cognitively challenged students are most likely to attend—community colleges—have far lower rates of disabled students, with only three to four percent of such students getting accommodations.

Poor people denigrate mental health issues and don’t have reliable insurance to do anything about it quickly even if they wanted to buck the trend

Rich people fawn over mental health issues, and can quickly get diagnosis over telehealth, rescheduling with a different provider in minutes if the current one won’t diagnose

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

#879

Post by frm88 »

aeturnum wrote: post #191
jph00 wrote: 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…

It is interesting to consider that disability may enable much higher academic performance as long as people get the proper accommodations. After all, wouldn't it be interesting if people we think of as disabled can - under the correct conditions - be more productive than 'able' people. An individuals' capability is generally pretty circumstantial and I think we should be open to asking questions about how optimal our…

^^This! Our current societal and cultural structure is not adequately set up to deal with, for example climate change and subsequent mass migrations, widening wealth gap, increasing authoritarianism, centrlising of control and power and a myriad of other problems, not to mention any second and third order effects; let alone improve to higher levels of productivity.
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