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

reason.com

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

#961
So I was little confused until I realized the source was a libertarian outlet. If it wasn't obvious from the piece, the popup asking for donations to fight "socialism" should be the nail in the coffin. This explains the extrapolation of data and drawing broad conclusions from it. They seemed to have enter the article with a bias that disability only means physical and that most if not all mental disability is a personal failure. It further fuels this by finding a professor who makes the claim that a large part of the student body is just making up disorders. They of course assume that doctors are widely handing out diagnoses without proper scientific backing. Which is a huge leap to make. There is a similar positive and negative stereotype that children en masse are taking Ritalin and other ADD meds to pass classes.

It reminds me of the transgender "debate". That the medical establishment is someone acting contrary to science. That all of these people with years of training are part of a conspiracy to hurt children. Not surprising that this sentiment is popular amongst libertarians and applied to other students. It's disappointing to see so many echo it's sentiments without critically thinking about the piece.

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

#962

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's one theory. Counter theory: for all of human existence people have shared resources and traded among each other. Yes, for truly scarce resources trade breaks down. So is "good housing" a scarce resource on Stanford's campus? Or is their default resource allocation schema too anti-human so it's turning something that should be a simple trade and negotiation problem into a knife-fight?

America is rooted in capitalism, so the resource allocation schema of scarce goods (e.g. nice homes to raise families in) is indeed a knife-fight.

How is capitalism to blame for local governments implementing various zoning and building code regulations that make it hard+expensive to build?

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

#963
post #930

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is not what they're describing. Have you ever gone through the process of receiving an accommodation at a university? It is significantly more challenging than just having a diagnosis. They will look for every single possible excuse to refuse you access. They will require you to repeatedly book new doctor's appointments to get extremely specific wording for any accommodation you may need. Your doctor will have t…

Come now we're discussing an article where 4/10 students have accomodations. It can't be that hard to get.

Interesting that you find the alternative of 4/10 needing accommodations to be completely unrealistic.

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

#964
post #557

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Still shitty privileged behavior, and any doctor providing a diagnosis just to get a kid a better dorm room, should immediately have his or her license revoked.

I don't know how it works now, but in my case the Doctor had nothing to do with it. It's obvious I'm blind since I use a cane. I showed the person in charge of accommodations how bulky a braille printer along with all its paper is, and the noise it makes that's loud enough to wake anyone who may be trying to sleep in the same room. They granted me the accommodation since I had to use braille for math, physics, chemis…

Yes, my comment doesn't apply to you. Sorry if I implied that it did.

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

#965

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Why? Teachers have lives, including needing to eat and sleep.

Sure, but that answer doesn't address the questions of the value of time limits on assessment. What if instead we are talking about a paper or project? Why isn't time-to-complete part of the grading rubric? Do we penalize a student who takes 10 hours on a project vs the student who took 1 hour if the rubric gives a better grade to the student who took 10 hours? Or assume teacher time isn't a factor - put two kids in…

Not arguing with any of that, just stating plainly that there are practical reasons for time limits and one of the many reasons is that tests are done supervised and thus must have _some_ sort of time limit. Everything else is you projecting an argument onto me that I didn't make.

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

#966
post #869

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

That’s actually impossible (everyone gets the same benefits). You’re talking about a lottery, which randomly distributes them - which is only fairer in the sense it’s unpredictable, not that anyone that actually needs it would get what they need. It’s typical gaming of the system, and shortly it’s going to have to switch to punishing those gaming it or it will spiral even more out of control.

You’re overthinking it. The accommodation is a quieter room with a more generous time limit. Just provide that and use a lottery to distribute slots. I had classes that had take home finals.

My son runs into the phony accommodation game in middle school. The latest BS is to get a dyslexia diagnosis, which lets you have more time and take a 90 minute break (where they look up the answers). 9 kids discovered that they have this condition in 8th grade. Performance impacts eligibility for placement in some programs in high school.

If the kids didn’t know it, I wouldn’t have an issue with it. But they do, and abusing accommodations and gamification of zero integrity behavior undermines society in a small way.

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

#967

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do you have children? I do. I still subscribe to your ideals or at least mostly follow them. But for lack of playing such games, I saw my children’s opportunities slip away.

My kids are not that old, so it hasn't come to a head yet. I presume you're talking about school performance - particularly closer to high school? At the same time, we may need to adjust our baseline on what we call "opportunities". I've lived in other countries, and one of the nice things about the US is how uncompetitive school is. One could (and likely still can) get into a decent "average" university without much…

We are being vague here about "quality" and "average", by in the US, about 15% attend 2-year junior colleges, and about 50% attend 4-year colleges.

About half of those 4-year college students are earning degrees that are mostly filler and would be 2-year colleges plus remedial and/or fluff courses. USA has a very weird college industrial complex.

China, meanwhile is undergroing a massive push to send a majority of the population through some form of college or another.

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

#968

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>I've lived in other countries, and one of the nice things about the US is how uncompetitive school is. One could (and likely still can) get into a decent "average" university without much difficulty. In other countries, not so. You could be in the top 10% academically and end up in a really low quality university. I would understand playing such games there. The difference is you're going to pay nosebleed prices or…

Yes, but you get to go. In plenty of other countries, there are far fewer seats than students graduating from high school. Being merely above average means no college degree. (Well, except they also have private schools, but the cost to income ratio is much higher there than here).

Whats the ratio? Private 4-year college per year in US costs more the median family income per year

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

#969

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thats true, but I think the blame is more on "American society" and not the kids working through the system. 50 years ago, college was cheaper. From what I understand getting jobs if you had a college degree was much easier. Social media didn't exist and people weren't connected to a universe of commentary 24/7. Kids are dealing with all this stuff, and if requesting a "disability accommodation" is helping them throu…

Indeed, it's much more reflective of American society in 2025 than it is of the individual students (or even Stanford in general).

2025 didn't invent sneaky.

"Snake oil" is over 100 years old.

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

#970

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is probably not good if nearly half (38% qualifies as nearly half, right?) of students are considered disabled and needing accommodations, right? Surely nearly half of any given public population can't be disabled?

Most everyone has some disability or other. Just because you may work around it or not think of it that way, doesn’t mean it doesn’t exist.

My point is that a disability you can simply "work around" isn't really much of a disability, is it?
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