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This article makes it sound like a scam. Is it? I and readers would benefit from actual analysis and information, not emotive responses, which will not appear. Thanks.
I don’t know anything about the Stanford case, but I’ve noticed a dramatic increase in the number of students who get testing accommodations over the past 10 years (e.g., about 15-20% of the students [in a class of well over 100 people] in my STEM-heavy class at a large state university). It’s always been unclear to me how this helps many of the students in the long run, since, once they graduate, their employers (a law firm, say) are presumably not going to give them extra time to finish their document review because they have ADHD. There seems to me to be a lack of open discussion about whether these policies are helpful or just in cases in which the accommodation is cognitive (as opposed to physical).
“It’s always been unclear to me how this helps many of the students in the long run, since, once they graduate, their employers (a law firm, say) are presumably not going to give them extra time to finish”
That doesn’t really matter, though. If this hypothetical lawyer was able to boost their SAT, college grades, LSAT, and law school grades through accomodations, it is true that they may land themselves in a job they where they can’t actually handle the workload, but by then they are a mid-to-late twenties lawyer with top tier credentials and a few years experience in Big Law. At worst, they are going to gently fall to their level of competence. A much easier road than if they didn’t have those fancy credentials.
My guess as an outside yet educated observer is that the issue involves a combination of learned helplessness plus secondary gain.
Commenters with greater familiarity could judge better.
Sounds to me like a straightforward application of runaway in evolutionary game theory:
At time zero, structural barriers were in place (high cost to attempt to get an arbitrary accommodation). Social stigma functioned as an additional cost. The mechanism for approval of accommodation can therefore be a cheap filter (large type 1 error, low type 2 error) because only the serious (for whom paying the high costs are worth it) are bothering to apply.
At time 1, structural barriers were eased (low cost to attempt to get an arbitrary accommodation). Social stigma functioned as an additional cost. The mechanism for approval of accommodation is still cheap, though more are bothering to apply. An increase of approved accommodations follows.
At time 2, social stigma is eased (because it is now a more common thing). A resulting ever lower cost to attempt leads to ever more attempts, leads to ever more successes. This is because the filter has stayed “cheap” (in the sense of large type 1 error, low type 2 error).
If this is an apt dynamics, we can get a sense of the inevitability of the trend apart from the morality of it all. (An example of the latter: one might think stigma is unjust, so it ought to have been eased—maybe even quicker. Or, one might think that the structural barriers ought to have been eased—maybe even quicker. Or, one might think that the filter ought to be “cheap” in the sense used here. Organizing to the effect of the first two oughts would presumably accelerate the runaway trend; organizing to the effect of the third ought makes it difficult to stop the runaway. (And yet, plausibly, all three oughts seem defensible! And here we are.)
My university has about 10,000 students including both undergraduate and graduate. A few years ago I was informed by the director in charge of accommodations that they have 1100 students registered with their office.
What constitutes a disability is jointly determined by both the person and their surrounding environment.
I have been formally diagnosed with ADHD. But I do not interact with the same people or physical environs as does everyone else who has ADHD. Therefore, to the extent that an organism’s environment constrains the activity of its gene regulatory networks, and by extension, its development, it follows that the developmental trajectories of people with ADHD will not all be the same. This entails that what ADHD looks like in one case may not be the same as what it looks like in another.
Building on this, some people with ADHD will tend to find themselves in circumstances which are more conducive to living with their particular version of ADHD than will others. In my case, I spend my days in solitude, reading, writing, thinking, and generally being free to indulge my capacity to hyper focus on what interests me for long stretches of time. I have few meetings, which is also helpful, since I have a frustrating habit of working through meetings. (I even worked through my first meeting with the psychiatrist who eventually diagnosed me.) By contrast, when I was in my teens, I briefly worked at a call center taking people’s pizza orders. I hated that job. I struggled mightily, as I found it very overwhelming. Suffice to say, whether or not a given person’s given version of ADHD interferes with their ability to live well/perform well is going to depend on what circumstances they find themselves in.
As for the university setting, it is entirely conceivable that one student with ADHD might thrive where another struggles. Both have ADHD, but the ways and degrees to which they are “disabled” are at least partially contingent on the university setting.
All this to say, “disability” has always been a relative term. Whether or not my ADHD constitutes a “disability” will change in different circumstances. Therefore, a disability is not something one “has.” It is something one “struggles with.” In some environments my ability to make progress is retarded by the mismatch between my needs and the environmental structure which has been put in place to meet the needs of those who are different than me. But this does not make me a “retard.”
If 40% of students claim to be disabled, then, that could reflect that 40% of students find themselves in environments which were put in place to meet the needs of the remaining 60%. Or it could reflect a combination of myriad other possibilities, such as bloated administrative staffs turning universities into something they ought never to have become – life experience providers which theoretically increase one’s employability. (wink wink) Who knows? What I am more interested in is why we care about this issue?
It seems to me that the worry is that there are those who might abuse whatever accommodation granting system we put in place. But surely that worry doesn’t justify altering this system in such a way that those who genuinely need accommodations are further burdened as a result.
In my own case, I genuinely struggle with logistics and filling out forms. Yet applying for benefits and accommodations is riddled with form-filling and appointment-making. Therefore, I have never followed through on any of the applications I have started. It would be nice if applying for accommodations was not itself a barrier for people who need accommodations just to apply. But alas, we live in a world where, in an understandable effort to safeguard against abuse, we require that applicants meet a certain burden of proof. The upshot being that whereas one group of people might think the burden of proof is too low, and, in an effort to cut down on the risk of students abusing the system, they might work to make it harder to receive accommodations, there are others for whom the burden of proof is already too high.
Fill out a few forms, go to a few meetings, what’s so hard about that? There’s a difference between a genuine handicap and merely being unwilling to something we don’t like doing. Just because I don’t like forms and logistics doesn’t suffice as a reason not to do what it takes to get help. Indeed, I agree. I think people should work hard, and learn independence, and resiliency. So merely not wanting to do something difficult is not a good reason not to do it. We’re on the same page.
However, if not doing something I hate doing leads in the long run to my suffering more as a result, if I am aware that I could relieve my suffering by doing the thing I hate doing, but I nevertheless still choose not to do that thing, then I am not being lazy or entitled. For what I have intentionally chosen to do is in fact ultimately the harder, more uncomfortable thing.
Ok, so if not laziness, then irrationality? If I know that I could ease my struggle by doing that which I loathe, but I still choose not to do that which I loathe then I am being stupid. Either that or I enjoy pain. I can definitely see how my actions, or rather inaction, might be characterized as irrational.
Then again, I told you I was disabled, right? We have so far emphasized the role of the environment, but let’s not ignore what I bring to the equation.
What my ADHD boils down to is an inability to shift my attention away from that which interests me to that which does not interest me. (And for the record, that includes most analytic philosophy.) I love philosophy and science so much that I am constantly daydreaming about the stuff. But when you tell me I have to stop thinking about fun and fascinating things, and think instead about dull and boring things, it’s almost like my brain needs to take a moment to switch gears. I go blank. During that moment when my mind is pulling in two different directions, I actually can’t think about anything. In most cases, such as when I need to do regular household chores, I can make the switch successfully, at least until I can put my body back on autopilot and go back to thinking about what interests me. In the case of questionnaires, however, I actually cannot think about much of what I am being asked. When asked whether I would say I that I experience difficulty focusing, for instance, I can say “no,” not because I am thinking about a life I am often not paying attention to, but because I have already identified in an abstract way that I hyperfocus. But if asked to give an example from the past few weeks where X occurred, my brain shuts down. I honestly can’t think of an example. I know fact, I don’t even remember what I had for lunch yesterday. So filling out forms isn’t just hard, it’s very often impossible, or at least, it is impossible to do in anything like a “reasonable” amount of time with a “reasonable” amount of effort. It isn’t like I avoid logistics and form filling just because they aren’t fun, I avoid them because my brain actually won’t allow me to not think about fun things. If that sounds rather pleasant, you aren’t wrong, but this is an insidious, irrational pleasantness which, in the long run, causes me to suffer. We live in a world where one needs to be able to think efficiently about the mundane in order to thrive. I lack that ability, so in this world, I am disabled.
One last point. For those of us who think the generation whose world we helped shape is soft, privileged, and entitled, perhaps we can take comfort in knowing that that is exactly what the generation who shaped our own environment thought about us.
Grad student here. My experience in the last six years has been that if you list any “disability”, you will get preferential treatment i) in exams (because of “fairness”), ii) in university offers (because administrators want to crank up their disability numbers to look virtuous), and iii) in hiring for the same reason, but only in certain companies. From a student perspective, administrators seem to basically be running universities and companies nowadays, and they love disabilities. Not sure if that’s a Freudian thing or a Münchhausen by proxy, but they sure do enjoy infantilising students in many other respects too.
The cost from a student perspective is zero because nobody ever demands proof of diagnosis. The benefit huge. All the students know it, so I’m more surprised that this is not ubiquitous knowledge among professors!
Full disclosure: I have two diagnoses, but I too ticked those two boxes selectively — only when I thought it would be advantageous.
There’s some sort of Catch-22 joke here: if you’re smart enough to ask for disability accommodations, you probably don’t need them; if you don’t ask, well…
Weis & Bittner (2022) “College Students’ Access to Academic Accommodations Over Time:
Evidence of a Matthew Effect in Higher Education” Psychological Injury and Law, 15(3), 236-252.
“Although access to accommodations increased[…]this change was largely driven by students attending
America’s most selective and expensive private institutions. Access to accommodations was significantly lower and remained relatively stable among students attending 2-year public colleges. These findings suggest a Matthew effect […] in which students most in need of academic support are increasingly least likely to receive it. ”
Weis was interviewed in The Atlantic’s Dec 2025 article on this…
This fits with my experience. I am at a regional public school and the number of students requesting disability accomodations is well below 10% here. However, even in the lower stakes field these students are playing in, I have noticed that there is a pretty even split in my classes between students requesting accomodations that are barely passing and those that are at the top of the grading curve (with very few in the middle). My response has been to give multiple short exams over the quarter where students have the full class period to finish something that will take much less time for most students. Anyone attempting to game the system doesn’t get much, if any benefit, but the ones who aren’t still get more time.
I disagree with the idea that ADHD is not a disability. I have ADHD. I was diagnosed as an adult. As a child, I had an IEP, but it was for less defined disabilities. I stopped getting any special support or accomodation in seventh grade.
There are some people who are inappropriately diagnosed with ADHD. That is true. But, for those that are appropriately diagnosed, it is actually a challenging disorder. Even though I have appropriately prescribed medication (methylphenidate, the generic version of Ritalin, which I did not start until well into my professional working years) and I have weekly psychotherapy meetings (where some of the work is devoted to helping me with challenges that arise from my ADHD), focusing on various mandatory daily tasks that are not highly interesting remains a challenge for me.
There are many people that have a high IQ and many talents but also have ADHD. In the past, because shame and stigma was attached to the ADHD diagnosis, many of those people struggled in all sorts of ways. Many people still do. ADHD is associated with a lifespan that is 12 years shorter than the average person.
I think that some of the increase in the percentage of people with disabilities at top universities (such as Stanford) is that more children (at least those from upper middle and middle class backgrounds) are now receiving appropriate ADHD diagnoses and are receiving appropriate treatment and accommodation. Some of these students have high IQs.
These students are now much more likely to be successful in school than in the past. In the past, they would be regularly disciplined (and stigmatized) as wild children who misbehaved. They would not be able to focus on uninteresting tasks, so their grades in high schoolwould be all over the board. This would prevent them from getting into top universities. This is my hypothesis. However, much of this comes from my reading researched sources. I am sorry that I do not have the time to provide you with all of these sources.
It is true that these students will not receive extra time in the professional working world. However, there are several senses in which the university setting is actually more challenging than the real professional world. In a university setting you often have short (as in a few hour) timed exams. Even at a large law firm (I worked at two different large law firms earlier in my career), there are relatively few assignments with such a short deadline. I did sometimes have assignments where a part (or the whole) was due eight or twelve or eighteen hours after being assigned (including on my first day at one firm where I was given an assignment at 3:00 p.m. and was told that it was due the next day by 9:00 a.m.).
In the setting of a university exam, some extra time could be helpful. I did not have extra time and still managed to receive excellent grades. However, I think it was at great emotional expense, and I think that there were some subjects where I would have done better. I think it would have been an appropriate accomodation for me, as it is for some others.
we live in a time of diagnoses and accomodation. so it isnt surprising. is it real? hard to say apart from the hermeneutic frame one applies. In todays dominant frame a young persons restlessness and inattention is diagnosed often as ADHD. Stress over tests or social situations or performances are signs of anxiety. Unhappiness and frustration about oneself, one’s lot in life, or ones relationships are indicators of depression. As a critical theorist one can explore the motivations of the psychiatric, educational, and pharmaceutical industial complexes both in terms of financial gain and justifying their identities and practices. Its complex. Students buy in because it explains the difficulties they have and shifts the responsibily to others to accomodate them.
Nietzsche, in spite of numerous “disabilities” and illnesses, wrote, in my opinion, the greatest works of literature and philosophy of the 19th century.
Beethoven, very admired by Nietzsche, wrote the greatest classical of the late 18th century and early 19th century in spite of growing deafness and surely one or two or more “personality disorders”.
If you study the lives of the great geniuses, few of them were exactly “normal”.
In the eighties I attended an Ivy League school while suffering an undiagnosed severe mental illness. School needless to say was not a therapeutic environment; further, extra time on a test would have changed little.
While I can’t imagine so many students have severely mental illness, their distress is real and probably exacerbated by the competitive school environment and the cold world we many agree we live in.
The solution of extra time on tests is much like giving a bandaid to someone having a heart attack
It’s not a “scam” … it’s a “grift”. I first became aware of it in 1995 or so when a recent graduate patiently explained it to me with the air of “funny, you don’t seem this stupid, but I guess you are”. Would it surprise some of you to learn that her father was a lawyer?
Based on my careful (albeit non-professional) observation of nieces, nephews, and kids of friends in the intervening years it seems obvious to me that this approach to education has drifted downwards, driven entirely by their anxious and ambitious middle-class parents who–reasonably enough–aim to seize any advantage for their children.
I submit that this has had the effect of reifying these conditions. There are now large numbers of kids who have come to regard themselves as “disabled”—and trust me, they will talk your ear off about their OCD, ADHD, depression or what have you if you give them the slightest chance.
What used to be considered as merely part of a more-or-less well-ordered personality is now regarded as its opposite, i.e., a “disorder”. It strikes me as weird, unhealthy, and ultimately socially damaging, but that is probably just my own disorder talking (look for grumpy old man syndrome in the next DSM).
Hi Pillette,
They’re creating or perhaps unconsciously attempting to create a generation of Nietzsche’s last man.
I think you’re right. I never handled an ADA-on-campus case, but I did do some Title IX cases and it’s my considered opinion that liberal parents, their teenage offspring, and college administrators really all do believe that their morality is the only morality; that through the application of their new moral regime they have established a realm of justice and harmony; and that they have therefore invented happiness. (And if this happiness feels like misery, that’s because you are a moral defective, obvs!)
But (in the Title IX context anyway) any reasonably skeptical outsider looking at this regime will ask him/herself, do any of these people have ANY authentic human experience (sexual or otherwise) at all? IIRC, Jeannie Suk Gerson did an excellent summary of Title IX ideology in a law review article. At the time I read it, it didn’t occur to me to cross-reference it with “Beyond Good and Evil”, but when I return to the active practice of law I will henceforth keep FN on my desk next to “Garner’s Dictionary of Legal Usage”.
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