Students at America's elite universities must be the brightest and most promising young people in the country. And yet, a shocking percentage of them apply for academic accommodations designed for students with learning disabilities.
IN article published this week in Atlantic, Education reporter Rose Horovitch provides some shocking numbers. At Brown and Harvard, 20 percent of undergraduate students are disabled. At Amherst College, the rate is 34 percent. At Stanford University, the figure is 38 percent. Most of these students report mental health and learning disabilities such as anxiety, depression and ADHD.
Obviously something is wrong here. The idea that some of America's most elite and selective universities (schools that require 99th percentile SAT scores and perfect essays) will educate large numbers of truly learning-disabled students is patently bogus. A student with real cognitive problems is much more likely to end up in community college or not graduate at all, right?
The professors Horowitz interviewed largely support this theory. “You hear the words ‘students with disabilities,’ and that’s not kids in wheelchairs,” one professor told Horovitch. “That's just not true. Rich kids get extra time on tests.” Talented students enter college, begin to struggle, and run to diagnostic tests to avoid bad grades. Ironically, the very schools that students with cognitive disabilities most often attend—community colleges—have far fewer students with disabilities, and only three to four percent of these students receive accommodations.
To be fair, some students who receive these accommodations actually need them. But the current language of the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) allows students to obtain expensive housing with only a doctor's note.
While some students no doubt seek out such accommodations as semi-conscious cheaters, I think most genuinely identify with a mental health condition that they exploit to gain extra time on tests. Over the past few years, there has been a growing movement to view mental health and neurodevelopmental disorders not just as a medical fact, but as a marker of identity. Will Lindstrom, director of the Regent Center for Learning Disabilities at the University of Georgia, told Horovitch that he sees a growing number of students from that perspective. “It’s almost like it’s part of their personality,” Lindstrom told her. “By the time we see them, they are convinced they have a neurodevelopmental disorder.”
What's driving this trend? Well, the way conditions like ADHD, autism and anxiety are talked about online—the place where most young people first learn about these conditions—is likely a contributing factor. The creators of the Internet tend to paint a very broad picture of the conditions they describe. A quick scroll through TikTok shows creators tagging everything from always with headphones onto be bad at time managementTo drawing in class as a sign that someone may have a diagnosable disease. Based on these videos, who isn't disabled?
The result is a deeply distorted idea of what is “normal.” If ever difficulty concentrating or boredom is a sign of ADHD, it means that a “normal”, non-disabled person has virtually no problems. It is believed that a “neurotypical” person can type a 15-page paper without a hint of procrastination, maintain perfect concentration during a boring lecture, and never experience social anxiety or awkwardness. This view is refuted by current ways of diagnosing many of these conditions. As Horowicz notes, when the last issue of the magazine was published DSMa manual that psychiatrists use to diagnose patients was released in 2013 and has significantly lowered the bar for diagnosing ADHD. When these conditions are defined so broadly, it is easy to imagine a highly intelligent Stanford student becoming convinced that any sign of academic struggle is evidence that he is learning disabled, and that any trouble making friends is a sign that he has autism.
Risk aversion also appears to be a compelling factor in encouraging talented students to report learning disabilities. Our country's most promising students are also the least confident about this. So afraid of failure – bad grades, a poorly received essay – they perceive any signs of struggle as a diagnosable disease. A few decades ago, a student entering college and finding the material harder to master and his time more difficult to manage than in high school was considered relatively normal. Now every time she picks up her phone, a barrage of influencers demands to tell her it's a sign she has ADHD. Discomfort and difficulty are no longer seen as typical parts of growing up.
In this context, it is easy to view the rise in academic opportunity among the nation's brightest students as yet another manifestation of the risk aversion inherent in aspiring upper-middle-class children. For most students at the elite colleges who receive them, the academic environment is a buffer against failure and self-doubt. Unnecessary accommodations are a form of cheating on two fronts: they give you an unfair advantage over your fellow students, but they also allow you to cheat yourself out of genuine intellectual growth. If you mask study deficiencies with extra time to read texts, soothe social anxiety by skipping presentations, and neglecting time management skills with extended deadlines, you can pave the way for higher grades. But you will also find yourself less able to deal with the challenges of adulthood.
