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    Joined: Feb 2010
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    This article surprised me. The fraction of college students with genunine disabilities cannot have quadrupled in just a few years.

    Colleges Bend the Rules for More Students, Give Them Extra Help
    By Douglas Belkin
    Wall Street Journal
    May 24, 2018

    Quote
    As many as one in four students at some elite U.S. colleges are now classified as disabled, largely because of mental-health issues such as depression or anxiety, entitling them to a widening array of special accommodations like longer time to take exams.

    Under federal law, students can be considered disabled if they have a note from a doctor. That label requires schools to offer accommodations depending on the student’s needs. A blind student, for example, would have access to specialized software or a reader for an exam.

    The rise in disability notes for mental-health issues has led to a surge in the number of students who take their exams in low-distraction testing centers, are allowed to get up and walk around during class or bring a comfort animal to school, among other measures.

    “At Pomona, we have extremely talented bright students with very high expectations who are coming in with a good level of anxiety and are highly stressed,” says Jan Collins-Eaglin, the Claremont, Calif., college’s associate dean of students for personal success and wellness. “Our job here is to help them really thrive.”

    At Pomona, 22% of students were considered disabled this year, up from 5% in 2014. Other elite schools have also seen a startling jump in disabilities, according to data from the federal government and from the schools. At Hampshire, Amherst and Smith colleges in Massachusetts and Yeshiva University in New York, one in five students are classified as disabled. At Oberlin College in Ohio, it is one in four. At Marlboro College in Vermont, it is one in three.

    Small, private schools have the greatest concentration of students with disabilities. Among the 100 four-year, not-for-profit colleges with the highest percentage of disabled students, 93 are private, according to a WSJ analysis of federal data.

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    Originally Posted by Bostonian
    The fraction of college students with genunine disabilities cannot have quadrupled in just a few years.

    Yes, but the awareness that it is possible to get accommodation for depression and anxiety easily could have. I personally was being treated for depression during all of my years at college, but it never occurred to me that I could have gotten accommodations for it at school - those were for people who were blind or deaf, not "weaknesses" like mine. So if I spend a weekend unable to do anything but curl up into a ball of stress and didn't get my homework done, I took my F and tried to make up for it later. I had classmates who did the same and, when it became clear that they were going to fail their courses, "solved" it all by jumping out of the dorm tower. I can't help but think that accommodations are a better solution.

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    While I understand what you are saying in the real world, such as getting a job, is an employer going to give you those same accommodations?

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    Though an employer may or may not actually follow through on accommodations, they are legally obligated to do so, under the federal ADA.


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    Some research that addresses prevalence of anxiety and depression in college students, not necessarily access to accommodations for same:
    https://www.washington.edu/news/201...n-one-fourth-of-states-college-students/

    The source material for this article is the Healthy Minds Study:
    http://healthymindsnetwork.org/

    Last edited by aeh; 05/25/18 09:32 AM.

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    I completely believe that the proportion of college age kids with depression and anxiety is closer to 25% than 22%. And according to the Washington state study, it’s not just the highly academic students at places like Pomona,
    The question remains whether accommodations in exams on producing a doctors note are really the right answer for that problem. If the conditions make a quarter of students sick, then something is wrong about the conditions.


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