[HN Gopher] Why are 38 percent of Stanford students saying they'...
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Why are 38 percent of Stanford students saying they're disabled?
Author : delichon
Score : 376 points
Date : 2025-12-04 18:04 UTC (4 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (reason.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (reason.com)
| pavel_lishin wrote:
| > _the current language of the Americans with Disabilities Act
| (ADA) allows students to get expansive accommodations with little
| more than a doctor 's note._
|
| Isn't that... good? What else would be expected if you have a
| disability, and need accomodations?
| bluefirebrand wrote:
| 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?
| cynicalpeace wrote:
| They're quite obviously not.
|
| They're lying so they can get unlimited time on the test
| and/or look at their phone.
|
| They're smart kids that see a loophole in the system. They
| will take advantage!
| bluefirebrand wrote:
| Right. What I'm saying is that we've probably screwed up by
| creating a system that incentivizes people to "be disabled"
| even if they really are stretching the definition of
| disabled
| skywhopper wrote:
| I hope you realize that the students don't think of
| themselves as "disabled" in the disparaging way you mean
| it. I have ADHD and I'm color blind. Both conditions make
| me "disabled" in some sense, and yet I went to college
| and have managed to have a job my whole adult life. Being
| "disabled" doesn't mean "useless" or "incapable of doing
| anything" as you seem to imply.
| skywhopper wrote:
| You clearly know nothing about how these accommodations are
| handled.
| lostmsu wrote:
| Can you clarify? I heard about the test time thing from
| students. That corroborates the parent comment.
| acedTrex wrote:
| > They're smart kids that see a loophole in the system.
| They will take advantage!
|
| This is just not an acceptable cultural viewpoint. Abusing
| a permissive system must be discouraged.
| rovr138 wrote:
| > Abusing a permissive system must be discouraged.
|
| Fine. Where are the doctors? Why is the debate on the
| students?
| lostmsu wrote:
| Both are culpable.
| carlosjobim wrote:
| That's how most of the people in the world are, including
| the dearest friends and family. Most people's only
| motivation in life is to find a loophole to abuse. They
| will even convince themselves they are something they're
| not to achieve it.
|
| God have mercy on us.
| bananalychee wrote:
| Even 5% would be pushing it at a university. It's easy today
| to get a diagnosis for something like mild ADHD whether one
| has it or not, and everyone is on some kind of spectrum.
| Legitimacy aside, classifying mild, manageable conditions as
| disabilities that require special accommodations and/or
| medication is counter-productive long-term.
| rovr138 wrote:
| Who are you to say what should be included or not, that
| something can be gauged as mild or not, and that there
| should be a treshold?
| ThrowMeAway1618 wrote:
| >Who are you to say what should be included or not, that
| something can be gauged as mild or not, and that there
| should be a treshold?
|
| They're _bananalychee_ , that's who they are!
|
| What are you, some kind of anarchist?
|
| All hail bananalychee! Master of the Universe and the
| last word on all things!
|
| Please bless me bananalychee by impregnating my wife and
| daughters!
| bananalychee wrote:
| I have firsthand experience being diagnosed and
| prescribed medication for ADHD within about half an hour
| of self-reporting mild symptoms with a physician
| remotely, for one, so perhaps I'm more of an authority on
| this subject than most commenters here. I suppose it
| would be equally trivial to seek an ASD diagnosis, since
| Asperger's is now lumped in with autism and classified as
| a disability despite not being one.
| ThrowMeAway1618 wrote:
| > have firsthand experience being diagnosed and
| prescribed medication for ADHD within about half an hour
| of self-reporting mild symptoms with a physician
| remotely,
|
| And that makes you competent to determine the value of
| the disability claims of others _and_ the appropriate
| accommodations such folks should receive?
|
| Really?
|
| Then again, you are the eminent galaxy-wide expert on
| such things, aren't you bananalychee.
|
| Will you honor my request to impregnate my wife and
| daughters so they can carry offspring that's so much more
| valuable than anyone else on the planet? Pretty please!
| rovr138 wrote:
| 25% of Americans have a disability,
| https://www.cdc.gov/disability-and-
| health/media/pdfs/disabil...
|
| We don't know what's the percentage broken down by age.
|
| If 38% is almost 50%, 25% is almost 38%.
| almosthere wrote:
| My dad at 50 got a disabled parking placard. He did have
| knee surgery, but he really didn't struggle with it about 4
| months after his surgery. I asked him why he still had it -
| I got the impression that at this point he wanted his
| priority parking spot anyway. Didn't like driving around
| with him much after that.
| lisbbb wrote:
| I wouldn't hold that against him that much--the
| overabundance of handicapped parking spots is reason
| enough to game that one. It's ridiculous. My wife could
| have qualified for a placard because of her cancer and
| she was in a wheelchair for awhile, but we didn't bother
| getting one.
| SilasX wrote:
| That's over the entire population, which includes the
| elderly. For the 18-34yo block, it's 8.3%, and you'd
| probably expect it even lower for ... well, the population
| that, to put it bluntly, succeeded in life enough to get
| into Stanford.
|
| https://www.census.gov/library/visualizations/2024/comm/dis
| a...
|
| Edit: And to clarify, just to be fair, I can accept there
| are many things that would qualify as "a disability that
| the education system should care about" but which don't
| rise to the level of the hard binary classification of
| "disabled" that would show up in government stats. I'm just
| saying that the overall 25% figure isn't quite applicable
| here.
| rovr138 wrote:
| I would love to have experts look at the data of this
| self reported community survey vs the CDC's data.
|
| ---
|
| To the edit, I can agree.
|
| We are talking ultimately what ADA classifies as a
| dissability. Which is different from what might be needed
| for driving (as an example).
|
| ADA has requirements. Doctors have their definitions.
| They're being met.
|
| If a doctor abuses it, then we should be going for the
| doctors. As was said in another comment, while they are
| human and susceptible, they also are the ones with the
| license.
| skywhopper wrote:
| 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.
| invalidOrTaken wrote:
| once expertise can drive benefits, expertise becomes a target
| for corruption
|
| weirdly: if you want good scientists, don't listen to them!
| this_user wrote:
| Any system that can be gamed will be gamed.
| bvisness wrote:
| The Reason article leaves out some helpful context from the
| original Atlantic article:
|
| > In 2013, the American Psychiatric Association expanded the
| definition of ADHD. Previously, the threshold for diagnosis had
| been "clear evidence of clinically significant impairment."
| After the release of the DSM-5, the symptoms needed only to
| "interfere with, or reduce the quality" of, academic
| functioning.
|
| So it's dramatically easier to get said doctor's note these
| days.
| almosthere wrote:
| If it turns out half of all people have something, it's just
| normal human stuff. Today's ADHD is likely a symptom of
| tiktoking your brain's serotonin out or some other chemical
| missinglugnut wrote:
| Nonsense. This is Stanford. The admissions process filtered
| for highly academically successful students and then 38% of
| them claimed a disability which impairs their academic
| performance. It's bullshit of the most obvious kind.
| rovr138 wrote:
| Example, do you think someone that's hard of hearing
| can't meet the standard for a 'highly academically
| successful student"? Or someone that's color blind? Or
| someone that's blind? Or someone in a wheelchair?
| db48x wrote:
| You've missed the point. How does Stanford end up with
| 38% of their students claiming to have a disability while
| other schools only have 3%? Are the other schools
| illegally discrimating against these students, so that
| their only alternative is Stanford? Or is it possible
| that something anomalous is happening at Stanford?
| viraptor wrote:
| While it doesn't explain the whole difference, it's not
| surprising that Stanford has a higher rate. First: the
| more demanding the environment the more likely you are to
| find (got example) milder ADHD to impact your life.
| Second: the more well off you are or more access to
| resources you have, the more likely you are to actually
| care to get diagnosed. Third: stressful environment can
| actually cause serious issues, suddenly. For non-
| education reasons I suddenly gained panic attacks while I
| was at uni and they took years to go away.
|
| I'm sure there are more things like that.
| db48x wrote:
| On the contrary, it's very surprising. There's no way
| that 38% of people are disabled by any definition of the
| word. 10x differences between the disability rate between
| schools simply should not exist.
| almosthere wrote:
| Yes 38% of students at stanford are either blind or in a
| wheelchair
| Jblx2 wrote:
| What percentage of Stanford students are in a wheelchair?
| Are the actual stats publicly available somewhere?
| sureglymop wrote:
| Where does the idea/reasoning that highly academically
| successful students cannot have a disability come from?
|
| I would go a step further and say there is probably a
| high chance that neurodivergent students are more
| academically successful, _iff_ they did get to that level
| of education. And it 's not impossible that they are
| overrepresented in that group of people.
|
| And people may be intellectually gifted, and yet
| experience strong behavioral and social difficulties. Not
| that my own observation counts but I've met multiple
| people on the spectrum who were highly intelligent and
| "gifted" yet faced more adversity in life, i.e. for
| social reasons. It's controversial because it directly
| goes against the idea that we exist in a meritocracy.
|
| People are going to cheat no matter what. To me, it's
| more important that the people who do need and deserve
| accomodations are able to get them though!
| esafak wrote:
| Nobody said that. They are saying or insinuating that 38%
| of successful students are unlikely to be disabled. That
| certainly was not the case as recently as a decade or two
| ago. People have not changed drastically, so what gives?
| guizadillas wrote:
| Change in diagnosis criteria, that doesn't mean people
| before weren't disabled. You need to understand people
| with ADHD usually overcompensate to meet the academic
| performance needed and it is not sustainable in the long
| run. It also doesn't mean they need accommodations, just
| that they are categorized as disabled in some way or
| form.
| powerclue wrote:
| > They said that 38% of successful students are unlikely
| to be disabled.
|
| Which is an unreasonable claim.
|
| I have a disability that impairs many aspects of my life.
| I was still capable of getting through college and am
| successful in my career. Having a disability does not
| mean you can't do academics.
| almosthere wrote:
| Touche, I'm just going to go ahead and upvote you.
| mapontosevenths wrote:
| Being diagnosed with the disorder does not automatically
| qualify as a disability. This article, and many people in
| this thread seem not to be able to distinguish between the
| rising rate of diagnoses, and being disabled or needing
| accommodation.
|
| I have been diagnosed as being several different types of
| neuro-divergent, but I am also not qualified as disabled and
| do not need or want any special dispensation. I would say
| that I have been relatively successful in life by almost
| anyone's metrics without it.
|
| There is still an enormous advantage in understanding
| yourself, even without the expectation of accommodation or
| medication. I was also, sadly, not diagnosed until my
| mid-40's.
|
| I would have had a much easier time getting to where I am
| today if diagnostic criteria and awareness among clinical
| staff were better when I was younger.
| powerclue wrote:
| Have you gotten one of these notes yourself? It's not
| trivial. It's a huge pain in the ass, and everyone along the
| path is saying, "I don't believe you".
| dlivingston wrote:
| I have, and my experience does not match yours. It was
| extremely trivial and was little more than (1) booking a
| psych appointment, (2) filling out an intake ADHD
| questionnaire at home (which can easily be filled out to
| give whatever diagnosis you'd desire), (3) meeting the
| psych & getting a formal diagnosis, and (4) picking up my
| Rx from the pharmacy.
| powerclue wrote:
| Dx out here required all those steps plus attestations
| from family and teachers, historical accounts, written
| narratives, a check in with the GP, bloodwork and blood
| pressure, and ongoing follow ups at least quarterly.
|
| Plus all that happens before you get an accommodation,
| which is a wholly separate process.
| scratchyone wrote:
| 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 to fill out multiple forms
| for the university. Then, for each class, you will have
| to meet with every professor you have to request your
| accommodations. Many of these professors will try to talk
| you out of using them, or find ways to get around them.
| swatcoder wrote:
| That's exactly the dilemma.
|
| Offering accommodations to people with disabilities _is_ good.
| So you do that.
|
| Then you recognize that not all disabilities that deserve
| accommodations are obvious so you establish some bureaucratic
| process that can certify people with these unobvious
| disabilities so they can receive the accommodations you meant
| for them to.
|
| But the people you delegate to issue those certificates are...
| well, they're people. Some of them are not so discerning, some
| of them are not so bright, some of take pleasure in gaming the
| system or playing Robin Hood, some of them accept bribes and
| trade favors, some of them are averse to conflict.
|
| Next thing you know, you've got _a lot_ of people with
| certificates saying that they have unobvious disabilities that
| grant them accommodations. Like, _way_ more than you would have
| expected and some whose certified disabilities are _really_
| unobvious.
|
| Might the genuinely good system you put in place have been
| abused? How can you know? What can you do? And if it's not been
| gamed, then what the heck is going on that _sooooo_ many people
| are disabled? That seems like it would reflect some kind of
| social crisis itself.
| rovr138 wrote:
| Okay, the oposite would be, you put a stringent process on
| how to measure things. You have rigorous testing. These all
| take time and money, including lost income in time you need
| to take away, and money paid for the testing.
|
| And you end up with people that could have had help to be
| successful, and not they're not being able to operate within
| the constraints.
|
| So, what do you do then?
|
| > then what the heck is going on that sooooo many people are
| disabled
|
| Good question. We should study this and figure what the fuck
| we are messing up as a society... if only we had funding and
| also we had someone that could act with the findings and take
| action.
|
| Looks like Stanford might be a good place to start. How's
| their funding situation?
| anon84873628 wrote:
| Article about this by Slate Star Codex:
| https://slatestarcodex.com/2017/12/28/adderall-risks-much-
| mo...
| zubiaur wrote:
| I would think so too. There is something else going though. It
| a system that relies partly on trust. A sort of moral asset
| with herd effects. It's a system that can tolerate a certain
| amount of gaming, but when the threshold is surpassed, it
| becomes a failed system. It has to change, to the detriment of
| the justly entitled.
|
| And that is the sad part, when that unstated assumption, that
| one may not lie, is broken past a threshold, it increases the
| transaction cost for everyone.
| jandrewrogers wrote:
| The necessary doctor's note can be trivially purchased without
| any meaningful evidence of disability. I know a number of
| children of wealthy families with these notes. They don't even
| pretend to be disabled, possession of the note makes it beyond
| question.
|
| Buying an advantage for your children in this way is
| widespread. This article suggests that it is even more
| widespread than I imagined.
| pavel_lishin wrote:
| So, let's say we make it more difficult to get "proof" of
| disability, something that requires more than just a doctor's
| note.
|
| Won't these rich people also be able to trivially acquire
| these, while people who actually need accomodations will
| continue to struggle because it's difficult to prove they
| need something?
| jandrewrogers wrote:
| Yes. The amount of gaming and cheating in pursuit of school
| credential maxing is astonishing. It is an entire industry.
| Parents pay many thousands of dollars to "consultants" who
| help facilitate it.
|
| Anecdotally this seems like it has become standard practice
| among the well-off families I know with children around
| college age. When everyone is doing it there is a sense
| that you have to do it too or you'll be left behind.
| apexalpha wrote:
| The problem is that it is also applied to disabilities that are
| not objectively measurable and therefor extremely prone to
| abuse.
| hollerith wrote:
| >the current language of the Americans with Disabilities Act
| (ADA) allows students to get expansive accommodations with little
| more than a doctor's note.
|
| Stanford can make the student pay any costs of the accommodation
| if Stanford wants to push back on the student. E.g., if the
| student requests extra time on tests, Stanford can estimate the
| total cost of employing the proctor and bill that (amortized of
| course over the amount of extra time).
|
| But yeah, it is kind of excessive how much special treatment a
| person can get in US society just by being rich enough to afford
| a doctor who will sign whatever letters the person needs (and
| being shameless enough to request the letters). Another example
| is apartment buildings with a strict policy of no dogs. With a
| doctor's letter, the pet dog becomes a medically-necessary
| emotional-support animal, which the landlord must allow per the
| same ADA discussed in the OP.
| sallveburrpi wrote:
| So rich people should be able to pay for extra time on tests?
|
| I don't see how that is pushing back or solving any of the
| problems the article talks about.
| lotsofpulp wrote:
| I don't think the ADA allows charging people with disabilities
| extra. For example, if you claim you have a service dog, then
| you are legally not allowed to be charged pet fees.
| sct202 wrote:
| With rates that high, it's a disadvantage if you don't have
| specialists assess your kid for all the things that could qualify
| them for extra testing time if you have the money to do it.
| ChrisArchitect wrote:
| Related:
|
| _Accommodation Nation: America 's colleges have an extra-time-
| on-tests problem_
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46121559
| skywhopper wrote:
| This is a really poor article that has no research behind it, and
| no attempt to investigate anything or talk to anyone with a
| different view. The only source is the terrible Atlantic article
| about the topic.
|
| There's plenty to discuss and disagree with these policies but
| the author's willingness to make broad judgments about college
| students' behaviors and internal states based on poor
| understanding of ADHD, the ADA, and what's actually going on at
| these schools is incredibly poor journalism by this author and by
| Reason.
| asacrowflies wrote:
| As a "real" disabled person with autism...whatever that
| means.... This entire thread is very saddening. And lacking the
| usual debate vibe and is just people dumping their hate and
| frustration with no real sources or data or understanding :(
| heddelt wrote:
| People respond to incentives. Give disabled people advantages and
| you get more disabled people.
| bradleybuda wrote:
| Reminds me of "Miracle Flights", in which dozens of people
| require wheelchairs to board but only a few require them to
| deboard. Of course, if you are in a wheelchair, you get to
| board first.
|
| https://www.explore.com/1804742/not-divine-story-miracle-fli...
| reducesuffering wrote:
| Incentives. Did you know that mental health specialists like
| therapists as a field are entirely in lock-step in giving an
| immediate diagnosis of _anything_ , because otherwise most
| insurance won't reimburse?
|
| Any functioning individual can go to a therapist and get an
| immediate diagnosis of an affliction, simply because therapists
| won't get clients if they don't provide the avenue for being
| funded by health insurance.
| brrwind wrote:
| > in giving an immediate diagnosis of anything
|
| I don't think this is a complete picture? Sure, they have to
| provide a diagnosis in order to bill insurance, but that can be
| something like F43.2/adjustment disorder, which is not a
| clinical diagnosis of depression or anxiety. Your comment makes
| it sound the typical experience is that you can just waltz into
| a talk therapist's office and be handed a slip of paper that
| says "I'm depressed." Which I'm sure exists, but I don't
| conflate pill-mills with responsible MDs, either.
|
| Regardless, depending on the state, licensed counselors are
| qualified to diagnose mental health disorders, so not sure what
| your comment is getting at.
| reducesuffering wrote:
| One one hand you say sure, they have to provide a diagnosis
| like an adjustment disorder, and on the other you say walking
| into a therapist's office and getting that is like a rare
| pill-mill? Is your only distinction that depression would be
| harder to obtain?
|
| This article is talking about any sort of mental health
| "disability", and the way the mental health system financials
| work is that it's no wonder we have so many identifying as
| having a disability. The system isn't evaluating an
| individual and applying a disorder to people that are
| factually on the 5-10% of the population that would be a rare
| "disorder". The system is literally slapping a _disorder_
| label on everyone that walks in and these people are
| _identifying_ with the label they 're given.
| brrwind wrote:
| > Is your only distinction that depression would be harder
| to obtain?
|
| Yes. You seem to be taking chagrin with the fact that
| therapists have to attach a diagnosis code in order to bill
| insurance, and then conflating that with inflated diagnoses
| of mental disorders that qualify as disabilities.
|
| My issue with your comment is that I think you're taking a
| systemic issue (which I acknowledge, btw) and framing it as
| therapists' misconduct. If your claim that therapists are
| categorically diagnosing anyone who shows up for the
| purposes of billing were true, we'd expect to see very high
| diagnosis rates specifically among therapists who rely
| heavily on insurance, relative to those who are mostly
| private-pay. I don't have that data, but I'd be surprised
| if the difference were as extreme as your framing implies.
|
| What did change in a clear, documented way was the DSM-5
| criteria in 2013, which lowered thresholds for several
| conditions and broadened who qualifies for a diagnosis.
| That is diagnostic classification problem, not a
| "therapists are gaming the system for billing" problem.
| delichon wrote:
| If 38% of the top 1% of students have learning disabilities then
| I'd expect students near the mean to be 100% learning disabled,
| if those words have any meaning left.
| everdrive wrote:
| I was sure you were going to say "then it follows that the top
| 0.1% must be 100% learning disabled."
| morkalork wrote:
| Maybe they're all that academically gifted kinda autism and
| students near the mean are less likely to be disabled? /s
| Brybry wrote:
| I know you did /s but in public school gifted programs here
| the gifted kids have IEPs (a document defining their
| Individualized Education Program) similar to what is required
| for special education kids with disabilities.
| wongarsu wrote:
| I can't talk about Stanford, but STEM-related jobs (including
| software engineering) certainly seem to be full of people
| with ADHD, autism and related "neurodivergances"
|
| I wouldn't be surprised if most of these Stanford cases are
| people gaming the system. But I would be equally unsurprised
| if screening all students of elite universities revealed that
| over 50% of them had some condition listed in the DSM-5, with
| clear correlations between condition and field of study
| alwa wrote:
| Aren't some of these "accommodations" for "disabilities" things
| as simple as, like, asking their professors not to put them on
| the spot in class if they have crippling social anxiety?
| Because while that might "toughen up" some people, with this
| person, that technique amounts to just punching them in the
| face for no constructive purpose?
|
| How much of this is a terminology problem--that the word
| "disability" serves this blanket purpose for statutory reasons
| rather than to signal the type or severity of impairment?
|
| Like, at the end of the day, these students still have to
| perform or not. I get the impression that a lot of these
| accommodations are kind of just a formal way of not being a
| dick about obstacles tangential to the actual learning.
| OneDeuxTriSeiGo wrote:
| I went to the university half way through my undergrad to
| file for a disability because I have ADHD and I go through
| short periods where my medication just stops being effective
| for whatever reason.
|
| It's not a major disability but it was a barrier to me
| performing at my best so I filed the paperwork and got some
| minor accommodations. It was basic stuff like letting
| teachers know during periods when I was struggling and they
| would allow me to take tests in a separate room (same time
| limit, just by my self in a quiet room) or allow me an extra
| 24 hours on certain assignments provided I requested it X
| amount of days ahead of time.
|
| Certainly they provided a minor "advantage" but not
| substantially. And these were things that most teachers are
| already generally willing to accommodate regardless of
| disability but the disability system provides a formal
| framework for doing so and avoiding the justifying yourself
| over and over again (vs just getting it cleared up at the
| start of the semester).
|
| Disabilities come in many shapes and sizes. Most of them are
| small and it's way easier to deal with an office that deals
| specially with disabilities to come up with accommodations
| that make sense for you and keep them consistent across your
| entire time at university than it does to try and negotiate
| terms with every single professor or TA.
| jancsika wrote:
| You are implicitly hard-coupling work ethic and ease of
| learning. Especially in the U.S., it is within the realm of
| possibility that the students near the mean possess a
| comparative ease of learning but value that advantage at
| roughly 0%.
| anon84873628 wrote:
| Let's posit that modern society is not really well suited for
| the true primate nature of humans. If participating in society
| is the benchmark, then almost all of us are disabled.
|
| As Scott Alexander opens his essay:
|
| >The human brain wasn't built for accounting or software
| engineering. A few lucky people can do these things ten hours a
| day, every day, with a smile. The rest of us start fidgeting
| and checking our cell phone somewhere around the thirty minute
| mark. I work near the financial district of a big city, so
| every day a new Senior Regional Manipulator Of Tiny Numbers
| comes in and tells me that his brain must be broken because he
| can't sit still and manipulate tiny numbers as much as he
| wants. How come this is so hard for him, when all of his
| colleagues can work so diligently?
|
| https://slatestarcodex.com/2017/12/28/adderall-risks-much-mo...
| belorn wrote:
| It should be mention the learning disability also include
| dysgraphia, which include handwriting. If the motor skills is
| impaired, then that get classified as a learning disability
| regardless of how easy the person can learn a complex subject
| in higher education.
|
| I view it similar to the ability to throw, kick and catch
| balls. Today it doesn't say much about a person ability to
| learn, but in the old times I can see the argument that it
| would be a hindrance in going through the education system. Not
| a learning disability per say, but a schooling disability.
| SabrinaJewson wrote:
| You know that "learning disability" isn't a synonym for
| "stupid", right? We neither call people who are less
| academically able "disabled", nor are disabled people
| necessarily less able to work academically (apart from some
| more debilitating mental disorders, which would be a
| disability). In fact, it's quite the opposite: the word
| "disability" exists _precisely_ to distinguish "intelligence" -
| which is what the university is selecting for - and other
| characteristics, so in theory intelligence and disability are
| entirely orthogonal (apart from the exception I mentioned).
|
| Of course, understanding what disability actually is requires
| considering each learning disability separately, which is
| something this article unfortunately fails to do. We can do
| this though:
|
| - Anxiety and depression: I see no reason why this should
| decrease somebody's intelligence, so the fact that there are
| elevated rates of such people at top universities does not seem
| odd. Since these are treatable conditions, they won't
| necessarily affect the ability for a student to become an
| effective researcher.
|
| - ADHD: This condition is marked by a lack of ability to focus,
| which is a property unrelated to intelligence. Some very famous
| mathematicians like Paul Erdos likely had ADHD, demonstrating
| that it's not necessarily true this condition makes one a worse
| researcher.
|
| - Autism: Does not necessarily reduce intelligence. We can look
| at professional mathematicians and see that a lot of them are
| autistic.
|
| - Chronic pain, migraines, etc: Unrelated to intelligence. It's
| possible this will decrease one's ability to be a researcher,
| but if one is able to complete University at all, it's likely
| not that severe.
|
| I mean, I could go on, and of course there will be a couple of
| counterexample. However, it is still the case that generally
| speaking, "learning disability" and "stupid" are different
| things, and therefore there is no reason to expect that there
| would be lower rates of learning disabilities among those who
| are highly academically skilled.
| OGEnthusiast wrote:
| American society is at the point where if you don't play these
| sort of games/tricks, you'll get out-competed by those who do.
| Bleak.
| acedTrex wrote:
| Basic game theory at work right there. You only need a few bad
| apples to cause the entire system to devolve.
| apparent wrote:
| Yup, a few bad apples start things off, and then after that
| many others who would have never been the first to do this
| decide to jump on the bandwagon (lest they be left behind).
| If it weren't for the shameless folks at the beginning, it
| wouldn't happen. But once they kick things off, it's a domino
| effect from there.
| shadowgovt wrote:
| Perhaps the fundamental issue isn't the apples; it's the
| barrel.
|
| If everything is a competition, then _of course_ people will
| leverage personal advantage for personal gain. But why is
| everything a competition?
| acedTrex wrote:
| > But why is everything a competition?
|
| For all of human existence there has been competition for
| limited resources. Until all resource scarcity is
| eliminated competition will remain in the natural world.
| shadowgovt wrote:
| 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?
| p1esk wrote:
| Pretty sure it was always like this
| SoftTalker wrote:
| No, "disability" used to be something of a stigma. Now it's
| celebrated, and people proudly identify with it.
|
| If you're saying that people always try to game the system,
| whatever it is, then I agree however.
| hattmall wrote:
| >If you're saying that people always try to game the
| system, whatever it is, then I agree however.
|
| This isn't even true either. In the past there was a huge
| emphasis and effort made toward character. Going out of
| your way to do the right thing and be helpful and NOT
| getting special treatment but choosing the difficult path.
|
| Now everything is the opposite it's about getting as much
| special treatment as possible and shirking as much
| responsibility and this isn't just people it's throughout
| the corporate and political system as well.
| SoftTalker wrote:
| Yeah, good times create weak men, and all that. I agree.
| apical_dendrite wrote:
| I can tell you from personal experience as a person with a
| physical disability that it's still very much a stigma.
|
| It's also very much possible for something to be both a
| stigma and an identity. In fact, the stigmatization can
| make the identity stronger.
| Detrytus wrote:
| Well, some kinds of disability still are a stigma, but
| here on HN neurodiversity/autism is celebrated as some
| kind of superpower, basically.
| apical_dendrite wrote:
| I'm aware. See for instance, VC Arielle Zuckerberg's
| comment that when deciding which founders to fund she
| looks for "a little of the rizz and a little of the tis"
| with "rizz" referring to charisma and "tis" to autism.
|
| One could argue that mythologizing a particular
| characteristic is itself a form of stigma.
| jay_kyburz wrote:
| I'm all tis and no rizz
| jfindper wrote:
| _some_ disabilities have mostly lost their stigma, sure, in
| some places.
|
| Many have not. Most have not, if you consider the whole
| world and not just California and Washington or whatever.
| alwa wrote:
| But, like--isn't the bleaker thing that that seems so
| existential of an outcome? The vast majority don't go to
| Stanford. The vast majority of those aren't valedictorian.
|
| And the vast majority of that vast majority's lives in the US
| work out, you know, fine--mostly including things like climate-
| controlled indoor spaces, ample calories, professional medical
| care, access to some kind of justice system, going their whole
| life without participating in war...
| OGEnthusiast wrote:
| > And the vast majority of that vast majority's lives in the
| US work out, you know, fine--mostly including things like
| climate-controlled indoor spaces, ample calories,
| professional medical care, access to some kind of justice
| system, going their whole life without participating in war
|
| By those metrics yes, but not by the more important metrics
| IMO of: buying a house, having a stable job, starting a
| family, etc.
| lotsofpulp wrote:
| > And the vast majority of that vast majority's lives in the
| US work out, you know, fine--mostly including things like
| climate-controlled indoor spaces, ample calories,
|
| I'll buy this
|
| >professional medical care, access to some kind of justice
| system,
|
| I doubt this. Most people in the US are probably aware one
| healthcare or legal issue in their family will derail the
| whole family's future.
|
| That is not to say things are worse than before. But humans
| view the world in relative terms, and they seem to expect
| more than reality can offer. And whereas before there was
| ignorance, today, there is widespread knowledge and
| visibility into the gulf between the have nots, the haves,
| and the have even mores.
| ux266478 wrote:
| > Most people in the US are probably aware one healthcare
| or legal issue in their family will derail the whole
| family's future.
|
| Healthcare sure, but for Americans, it is culturally and
| institutionally seen as a core part of justice that the
| guilty have their future destroyed. That it affects those
| dependent on the guilty is a part of that destruction, it's
| trying to isolate them from others. If you still have your
| family around, has your life truly been destroyed? Among
| American people it might not be universal, and may seem
| absolutely barbaric, but the extreme malignance of American
| justice is more or less consistent with a wide swath of
| attitudes Americans have, especially when they're the ones
| who have been severely harmed.
| Rebuff5007 wrote:
| 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 through it, that seems fine?
| OGEnthusiast wrote:
| Indeed, it's much more reflective of American society in 2025
| than it is of the individual students (or even Stanford in
| general).
| smcg wrote:
| Failing out of college can be life-ruining. Tens or hundreds
| of thousands of dollars of high-interest non-dischargeable
| debt and employment opportunities completely nuked.
| nradov wrote:
| Come on, let's be serious. Most Stanford undergraduate
| courses aren't that tough, grade inflation is rampant, and
| almost anyone who gets admitted can probably graduate
| regardless of accommodations or lack thereof. We're talking
| about the difference between getting an A or A- here. And
| Stanford has such generous financial aid that students from
| families earning less than $150K get free tuition so no one
| should be leaving with huge student debts.
| OGEnthusiast wrote:
| > no one should be leaving with huge student debts.
|
| "In the 2023-24 academic year, 88% of undergraduates
| graduated without debt, and those who borrowed graduated
| with a median debt of $13,723." Source:
| https://news.stanford.edu/stories/2025/02/stanford-
| sets-2025...
|
| So strictly speaking, not "no one". (But certainly
| smaller than the national averages.)
| ericmcer wrote:
| That seems naive, it would be like if we started dumping tons
| of deer food into the woods and the next year when deer are
| grossly overpopulated we thought "why are there so many deer
| now?".
|
| Humans are as a mass dumb animals, if we give them the
| opportunity for individual gratification at long-term cost
| for the group they are going to take it immediately.
| Barrin92 wrote:
| True but I don't think that's out of the norm. The upper
| echelons of American society always consisted of a bunch of
| fake status games and abuses, a legacy admission is basically a
| socially accepted form of disability. Or non-ability, I guess.
|
| America never had a rigorous meritocratic national system of
| education, it's a kind of half developed country in that sense
| that became democratic before it modernized (that is to say
| patronage survived) so you have this weird combination of
| family clans, nepo babies and networks competing with people
| who are where they are based on their performance.
| psunavy03 wrote:
| Depends highly on your field. There are plenty of military
| personnel and commercial pilots hiding things or avoiding being
| seen for any kind of treatment, because a diagnosis could lose
| them their jobs.
|
| Rolling out electronic health records has been a disaster for
| military recruiting, because such a large portion of kids flat-
| out lied on the medical screening, and 60+ percent of the
| population is already disqualified.
| ok_dad wrote:
| Yea I was depressed and it turned into a whole thing.
| Military especially hide mental issues due to the stigma and
| chance to lose your livelihood.
| jjtheblunt wrote:
| that's interesting, in that it would be very interesting if
| it motivates better fitness program funding federally
| dcchambers wrote:
| Long ago I remember reading society in China was like this.
| There's SO MANY people that you HAVE TO cheat the system to
| even maintain pace with your peers, much less get ahead. And
| cheating is so rampant that it's expected you will do it.
|
| Really sad that mentality seems to be normalizing world-wide.
| BeetleB wrote:
| I've made it a principle to live my life according to certain
| ideals - one of which is not to play these games/tricks.
|
| I'm doing better than fine.
|
| Have others who cheated done better than me? Sure - some have.
| Why should I care? I'm a high income earner and I don't need an
| even wealthier life.
|
| I am not at all an outlier. If you're amongst a crowd that
| won't value you for not cheating, it's on you to change the
| crowd you hang out with.
| drivebyhooting wrote:
| 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.
| BeetleB wrote:
| 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 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.
| meindnoch wrote:
| "A married man with a family will do anything for money." -
| Charles Maurice De Talleyrand
| skeeter2020 wrote:
| >> But for lack of playing such games, I saw my children's
| opportunities slip away.
|
| Examples? I most certainly don't play these games and
| believe my kids are further along in developing the most
| valuable, lasting characteristic: grit. So many things in
| life require you to grind, and the only way to gain this is
| to practice.
| serf wrote:
| >So many things in life require you to grind, and the
| only way to gain this is to practice.
|
| getting a kid who doesn't deserve entry to pass a
| prestige university with as little effort as possible is
| an effort to short-circuit that concept.
|
| many games to play in this world.
| drivebyhooting wrote:
| Children were passed up for elementary school admissions.
| Whereas the schmoozers and their kids got in.
|
| I can't provide proper education and practice. There is
| no grit or grind. They're just falling further and
| further behind the ones who actually got access to good
| schools and teachers.
|
| One who tested highly gifted (145 IQ) after years of
| educational neglect now tests at 120. It's pathetic. And
| even if I spend all my time and money I cannot reverse
| the decline.
| OGEnthusiast wrote:
| If you don't mind sharing, which country do you live in? I'd
| imagine the ability to play fairly and still get ahead varies
| a lot based on local cultures/norms.
| BeetleB wrote:
| The US.
| OGEnthusiast wrote:
| Interesting. I'm glad it worked it for you, but
| unfortunately that's very different from what my
| personal/anecdotal experience with America has taught me.
| BeetleB wrote:
| I think one has to be a bit careful in picking one's
| goals and priorities. I'm not saying "going the straight
| path" will lead to success in all endeavors (likely not
| at Wall Street, for example).
|
| In my case, it so happened that the goals I was pursuing
| (e.g. job in tech industry) had lots of opportunities
| that didn't involve playing many games. I think it's
| still the case today.
|
| But if your goal is "I have to go to an elite university,
| and become a senior exec at a FAANG", then my way may not
| work out.
|
| The one variable that's hard to control, though, is how
| things are growing up (childhood/teen years). You can't
| control these - your parents/school do. If you grew up in
| an unfair environment and had poor parents, you may have
| to play those games. My point is that once you get past
| those stages, you don't have to convince yourself that
| you need to _continue_ playing those games.
| d_silin wrote:
| This mentality is defeatist. I rather lose fairly than cheat to
| win.
| raldi wrote:
| It's true, if you don't go to the eye doctor, you'll be
| outcompeted by someone wearing glasses.
| FatherOfCurses wrote:
| Reason.com is operated by the kind of people who start the game
| with generational wealth in their back pocket.
| ericmcer wrote:
| Can we stop designing society like people won't game the
| system? I swear every social program or benefit or corporate
| relief program we roll out is designed to be exploited. In fact
| they use specific requirements (a doctors note, a set income
| level, etc.) and not direct oversight/discretion so it is even
| easier to game because you just need to tick the right box.
| dogleash wrote:
| Whether I care depends on the accommodation they're seeking.
|
| When I was in school, the department that dealt with
| accessibility could chop the spine off a book, scan it and give
| you a high quality ebook. I also knew someone who was flagrantly
| cheating with some test-taking accommodation.
|
| That ebook service was just a nice thing that more people should
| have taken advantage of. One or two of the professors even subtly
| encouraged using it to pirate textbooks.
| whalesalad wrote:
| It's like when all the prisoners in _Orange is the new Black_
| start to claim they are Jewish in order to get the nicer Kosher
| meals from the cafeteria.
| eszed wrote:
| Lol! I did that (sometimes) when I was in hospital in the UK.
| If you requested a halal meal they sourced it from a takeaway
| down the street, which was excellent, and a wonderful break
| from the usual dismal fare. I wasn't a dick about it, and would
| ask the meal order folks if it was OK to request one that day;
| sometimes they said 'yes', and sometimes not (based on what, I
| don't know), but they knew what was up, and didn't mind doing
| favors for those of us who'd been in a while. I'm still
| ridiculously grateful. The NHS (back then, a quarter century
| ago, now) was amazing.
| ThinkingGuy wrote:
| Supposedly this "trick" works on airline flights, too.
| GuinansEyebrows wrote:
| it's not a trick on a flight. you just request the type of
| meal you want from the airline, usually 24 hours before the
| flight. they don't make you recite blessings or koran
| verses... you just ask and they accommodate you :)
|
| most airlines that fly long routes offer a ton of different
| menus: kosher, halal, vegetarian, vegan, asian vegetarian
| (my favorite - usually indian food, which still tastes good
| when microwaved as opposed to a lot of non-first-class
| airline meals), lactose-free, gluten-free, diabetic-
| friendly... many options available that are usually a cut
| above the typical "chicken or beef".
|
| beware - you have to do this for each leg of a flight with
| layovers! i've occasionally had luck requesting a
| vegetarian or vegan meal in-flight but most of the time
| they only pack as many as are requested ahead of time.
| asadotzler wrote:
| You don't have to claim to be Jewish. You can simply
| request the Kosher meal and if they have enough supply, you
| get it.
| unglaublich wrote:
| Isn't it strategic at this point? Why not use the "disabled" card
| if it'll get you better results for similar cost?
| kazinator wrote:
| For pete's sake just give _everyone_ extra time on tests; what 's
| the big deal?
|
| If you know the stuff, regurgitating it _faster_ is a trivial
| optimization.
| SoftTalker wrote:
| How much time is enough, then? Do they get all day? A week? As
| long as it takes?
| OneDeuxTriSeiGo wrote:
| Best teacher I had in university offered "unlimited time on
| tests". Their tests were hard as hell but they were scheduled
| after the last class of the day and ran until like 10 at
| night. It worked out to like 5 hours of test time even if
| most people could complete the test in like ~1.5-2 hours.
|
| The policy was essentially "you have until the teacher/TA
| needs to go home" and given everyone in university is always
| swamped with work they were generally willing to stick around
| and get their own work done until it got super late and even
| then, even if you were the last test taker they'd generally
| negotiate a final 10-20 minutes with heads up so you could do
| your best to wrap up even if you weren't done.
|
| But generally the rule is ~2x test time. The extended test
| time accomodation is normally listed as "double time" in my
| experience even if profs were generally willing to give you
| more than 2x time if you were still making meaningful
| progress.
| bjt12345 wrote:
| This is a fantastic idea, as the exam becomes part of the
| teaching - if you sit there for 5 hours wishing you
| prepared your study better, that's an invaluable lesson.
|
| I suspect the reason why it does not occur more commonly is
| simply because of the costs of running such a long exam.
| SoftTalker wrote:
| A better lesson than if you sat there for 2 hours wishing
| you had studied?
| eszed wrote:
| Yep. That's exactly what I did when I taught at the
| university level. Mind you, I was single then, and had no
| family responsibilities, and the school was small enough
| that I could ask for the last test slot of the day and
| always easily get it. But, it's _excellent_ for everyone.
|
| It's unfortunately not practical for every class to do when
| everyone's taking all of their finals in the same week.
| There will be inevitable scheduling collisions: hence the
| need for timed slots and individual exceptions at
| alternative times and locations. If you can think of a
| systemic solution to that, I'm all ears. (Yeah: get rid of
| final exams. In theory I like that idea, too. AI is kinda
| pushing educators in the opposite direction at the moment.)
| Hizonner wrote:
| Get rid of academic terms, so that the finals don't all
| fall in the same week. Probably a hard sell.
|
| Be less obsessed with evaluation and grading. Which
| probably means people have to be less obsessed with
| having a credentialing and gatekeeping system while
| calling it an "education" system. Probably an even harder
| sell. Although since the _next_ step is for the AI to
| eliminate the need for credentialed humans, maybe we get
| it throught the back door.
| OneDeuxTriSeiGo wrote:
| Oh certainly.
|
| As for a systemic solution, I imagine you could probably
| handle exam scheduling at the university level once
| enrollment is over and drop week has passed. Of course
| this only works if the entire university is on board.
| Otherwise the system breaks down at the edges super
| quickly.
|
| Once enrollment is more or less fixed I imagine you could
| generate a fairly optimal arrangement of final exams with
| an SMT solver + linear programming. Give 5.5 hours per
| exam, 2x a day, with a 1 hour allocation for breakfast +
| travel and a 1 hour allocation for lunch + travel. That
| gives you 14 hours. Breakfast at 0700 if one is so
| inclined, exam 0800-1330, lunch 1330-1430, exam
| 1430-2000.
|
| You could do 6 hour exams but you'd have to offer
| extended hours on dining halls in that case since
| students may not be eating until 9pm/2100 or later.
|
| With 5 days, 2 exam slots a day, that's 10 exam slots per
| student. Most students are going to bunched into
| relatively similar courses per semester (with some degree
| of variation) and students essentially never take more
| than 8 classes in a semester (I did 7 one semester and 8
| the next and they just about killed me and generally I
| didn't see undergrad students taking more than 5-6).
|
| A solver should be generally able to find a solution to
| that optimizing for most even distribution of exams.
| Doubly so if the university starts finals a little early
| and does 6 or 7 days instead of 5 (i.e. starting on the
| friday or thursday before). And if a complete solution is
| not available, a solver could identify which particular
| courses are causing the optimization to fail and the
| admin could negotiate solutions from there.
|
| And of course you can improve upon this if the university
| incentivizes/pressures X% of courses in a program to
| offer no-exam/project based finals instead. Personally I
| hated project based finals (too much to do already and
| you end up forced to choose where you allocate your time)
| but I understand they are preferable for some students
| and they'd reduce the load during finals week assuming
| they are required to be due before finals and not during.
| stronglikedan wrote:
| Given the context of this discussion, the answer would be
| "whatever extra time they're giving to the disabled folks".
| heisenbit wrote:
| If you have to grade essays and you give students more time you
| have to spend more time on grading - taking away time from
| preparing lessons and supporting students individually.
| d3Xt3r wrote:
| Reminds me of the Asymptomatic Tourette's video
| https://youtu.be/H9X3GkacXG8
| hibikir wrote:
| I think there's a non-malicious explanation for a percentage of
| this.
|
| As I grew up in the 80s, there were two kinds of gifted kids in
| school: The kind that would ace everything anyway, and the kind
| that, for a variety of reasons, lacked the regulation abilities
| to manage the school setting well, with the slow classes and
| such. A lot of very smart people just failed academically,
| because the system didn't work for them. Some of those improved
| their executive function enough as they went past their teenage
| years, and are now making a lot of money in difficult fields.
|
| So what happens when we do make accomodations to them? That their
| peaky, gifted performance comes out, they don't get ejected by
| the school systems anywhere near as often as they were before,
| and now end up in top institutions. Because they really are both
| very smart and disabled at the same time.
|
| you can even see this in tech workplaces: The percentages of
| workers that are neurodivergent is much higher than usual, but
| it's not as if tech hires them out of compassion, but because
| there's a big cadre or neurodivergent people that are just in the
| line where they are very productive workers anyway. So it should
| be no surprise that in instutitutions searching for performance,
| the number of people that qualify for affordances for certain
| mental disabilities just goes way up.
|
| That's not to say that there cannot be people that are just
| cheating, but it doesn't take much time in a class with gifted
| kids to realize that no, it's not just cheating. You can find
| someone, say, suffering in a dialectic-centric english class,
| where just following the conversation is a problem, while they
| are outright bored with the highest difficulty technical AP
| classes available, because they find them very easy.
| lostmsu wrote:
| > The percentages of workers that are neurodivergent is much
| higher than usual
|
| Is it much though? 38%? I haven't seen one in 15 years across
| 5+ different companies.
|
| > there's a big cadre or neurodivergent people that are just in
| the line where they are very productive workers anyway
|
| Alternatively, it just became popular to label others or
| oneself that way. And tech elites have nothing better to do in
| free time. Also DEI benefits! Who else would be allowed a
| medical break due to a burnout and stress?
| jfindper wrote:
| > _I haven 't seen one in 15 years across 5+ different
| companies_
|
| How does one even know this? Do you ask everyone you meet if
| they are neuro-divergent? That's awkward as hell.
| MangoToupe wrote:
| > I haven't seen one in 15 years across 5+ different
| companies.
|
| I'm guessing you are blind, yea? Otherwise how could you
| otherwise justify such a statement?
| OneDeuxTriSeiGo wrote:
| > Is it much though? 38%? I haven't seen one in 15 years
| across 5+ different companies.
|
| How do you know this?
|
| Do you have access to their medical records?
|
| Are you in HR and have access to any accomodations they may
| have filed?
|
| Do they even have accommodations filed at work? Neither I nor
| many of the people I knew in university who had
| accommodations needed them in the workplace because the
| structure of an undergrad course setting is wildly different
| from that of an actual workplace.
|
| I have told HR at basically every place I've worked that I
| had filed for accommodations during university and that I
| generally manage my disability well but that I may need to
| file for formal accommodations at some point in the future.
| This isn't something that I've necessarily told people I work
| with and it's not visible or obvious. Most disabilities
| aren't.
| LoganDark wrote:
| > > The percentages of workers that are neurodivergent is
| much higher than usual
|
| > Is it much though? 38%? I haven't seen one in 15 years
| across 5+ different companies.
|
| Just another anecdote, but where I work (tech startup) there
| are at least 7 other employees (that I know of) and I can
| identify every single one as autistic. Three are one type,
| another three are another type, and I think the one other as
| well as myself are the same type.
|
| Research in the space hasn't advanced enough yet for this to
| be consensus, but in my opinion this preprint is exactly
| correct, and is what taught me that there are even subtypes
| to recognize at all:
| https://www.thetransmitter.org/spectrum/untangling-
| biologica...
|
| There are, of course, plenty of non-neurodivergent tech
| companies. These are typically boring corporate ones, though
| I think there are some non-flashy ones that are perfectly
| respectable. I don't think Microsoft would count, though;
| Asperger's can look a lot like a lack of neurodivergence if
| you don't pay close enough attention.
| footy wrote:
| My company is about 100 people. I regularly interact with
| maybe 12. I'm AuDHD and so are at least 5 others---4 that I
| have regular interaction with and have told me, and one who
| I do not have regular interaction with but told me anyway.
| There are also at least 3 pure ADHD people.
| swiftcoder wrote:
| > Is it much though? 38%?
|
| I'd say 30-40% is definitely in line with what I saw at
| various FAANG employers. Though it may be that other types of
| employer optimise less for those attributes.
|
| > I haven't seen one in 15 years across 5+ different
| companies
|
| Have you considered that you yourself may be neurodivergent?
| sokoloff wrote:
| > I haven't seen one in 15 years across 5+ different
| companies.
|
| Were you a solo founder of 5 companies? I literally cannot
| fathom that you worked at 5 even very modest-sized tech
| companies and never experienced a colleague with some level
| of what we'd call neurodivergent.
|
| I can't validate that the rate is 38%, but I find it hard to
| believe it's under 5% and if it's 5%, you'd be hard-pressed
| to avoid crossing paths across 5 companies and 15 years.
| IAmBroom wrote:
| That's unfair. Even a founder of a company wouldn't have
| any legal means of knowing for certain the disabled status
| of their employees.
| jjmarr wrote:
| Federal contractors are _required_ to track the
| percentage of self-identified disabled employees for
| reporting to the government.
|
| https://www.ecfr.gov/current/title-41/section-60-741.42
| monkeyboykin wrote:
| > And tech elites have nothing better to do in free time
|
| This is it exactly. Programmers believe that we are God's
| special autists. 'Neurodivergent' is a nonfalsifiable label
| just like 'queer'
| IAmBroom wrote:
| > Also DEI benefits!
|
| Ah, you accidentally showed your hand there. DEI does not
| provide benefits; it seeks to prevent continued, assumedly
| unfair, selection processes. Whether or not that is
| appropriate, or if the system was unfair, is arguable;
| fictitious "benefits" are not.
|
| No one gets a DEI check from the government. But since you
| don't even see that others around you have disabilities, we
| can't really expect you to know much more than Fox tells you.
| DaSHacka wrote:
| > DEI does not provide benefits; it seeks to prevent
| continued, assumedly unfair, selection processes.
|
| So it is not a benefit to be hired for a role over your
| peers because you satisfy an ethnic requirement needed for
| an arbitrary quota? I dont know about you, I'd sure love to
| have that on my side.
| fooker wrote:
| > I haven't seen one in 15 years across 5+ different
| companies.
|
| Hmm, have you looked in the mirror perhaps?
| quickthrowman wrote:
| Have you considered the fact that you may be neurodivergent?
| Your assumption that you've never met a neurodivergent co-
| worker is surprising.
|
| From what I understand, some autistic people assume everyone
| has the same worldview and agenda as they do, they lack a
| theory of mind. I'm not making this accusation about you, I'm
| bringing it up because I find it surprising that everyone
| you've worked with is neurotypical.
|
| I can usually tell if someone is neurodivergent or not within
| the first minute of meeting them, usually just from eye
| contact and body language.
| LoganDark wrote:
| > Have you considered the fact that you may be
| neurodivergent?
|
| I scrolled through some of their Reddit comment history
| (it's linked on their profile) and I think I would peg them
| as probably autistic. Their patterns of emphasis,
| placements of sentence breaks, certain turns of phrases and
| pattern of emotional expression seem to closely match a few
| autistic friends I have & a few autistic coworkers.
| Research on this hasn't fully developed though so I can't
| really offer references (other than the preprint that
| inspired me,
| https://www.thetransmitter.org/spectrum/untangling-
| biologica...)... I still don't really have a non-ambiguous
| way to call the different types.
| mapontosevenths wrote:
| > Because they really are both very smart and disabled at the
| same time.
|
| I agree with almost everything you say here. However, I wanted
| to point out that you make the same mistake the articles author
| does. "Disabled" and "Diagnosed" are not actually the same
| thing, even though we do describe ADHD and the like as
| "learning disabilities."
|
| Being diagnosed with a learning disability or other type of
| neuro-divergency does not automatically entitle someone to
| special treatment. The vast majority of that 38% are likely
| just "diagnosed" people who are asking for no special treatment
| at all.
|
| That doesn't fit the authors narrative, or trigger the human
| animals "unfairness" detector though so it makes a far less
| interesting article.
| paulpauper wrote:
| This Is detail often left out of this debate . A diagnosis
| does not imply accommodations.
| powerclue wrote:
| 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.
| skeeter2020 wrote:
| This is the common gag reflex, but multiple things can be
| true at the same time; there can be a greater need for
| support of disabled persons AND a shocking abuse of the
| systems by priviledged students. Ditto for the need to
| support women & minorities at the same time as white males
| are doing poorly and need help.
| AlexandrB wrote:
| 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 for these
| accommodations will erode. It's really frustrating to
| watch.
|
| Edit: If you want a recent example of this coming full
| circle, take a look at service animals. Sometime around
| 2021-2023 there was a wave of people claiming their pets as
| "service animals" or "emotional support animals" and
| bringing them everywhere in public. At first this was
| tolerated or even welcomed by businesses but increasingly
| animals are being banned from these spaces because of badly
| behaved pets. Those with genuine need for a service animal
| are caught in the crossfire.
| mapontosevenths wrote:
| > 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?
|
| Of course it's terrible for the genuinley disabled. That
| said, I would rather accidently assist an able person
| than accidently fail to provide the required
| accommodations for a genuinely disabled person. The
| default should be acceptance.
|
| Those who abuse these systems should be given an all
| expense paid trip to the surface of the sun. Ripping off
| the disabled is about as low as a person can get, and
| that is what they are doing.
| Aurornis wrote:
| The original article is more enlightening:
| https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/2026/01/elite-
| universit... (Gift link taken from the linked article, not my
| own)
|
| The stats are thin because not everything from private
| universities (where the disability numbers are highest) is
| reported. However they did get this:
|
| > L. Scott Lissner, the ADA coordinator at Ohio State
| University, told me that 36 percent of the students
| registered with OSU's disability office have accommodations
| for mental-health issues
|
| Note that's only accommodations for mental health issues, so
| exclusive of the numerous other disability types.
| jnovek wrote:
| You are actually landed on the difference between
| "impairment" and "disability"! They're often used
| interchangeably (along with "handicapped"), but they have
| specific meanings.
|
| https://med.emory.edu/departments/pediatrics/divisions/neona.
| ..
| Aloisius wrote:
| A majority of the 38% are receiving accommodations:
|
| _> This year, 38 percent of Stanford undergraduates are
| registered as having a disability; in the fall quarter, 24
| percent of undergraduates were receiving academic or housing
| accommodations._
|
| Mind, the disability rate for 18-34 year olds is 8.3% in the
| US, so even 24% is shockingly high. That's the same
| disability rate as 65-74 year olds.
| MangoToupe wrote:
| > I think there's a non-malicious explanation for a percentage
| of this.
|
| What on earth is a "malicious" explanation of this?
| apparent wrote:
| That people know they do not actually need/qualify for
| accommodations, but misrepresent themselves in order to get
| them?
| jfindper wrote:
| One example of a malicious explanation would be: people are
| lying about having a disability to get some sort of benefits
| they don't need, likely at the expense of someone who does
| need those benefits.
| teknopaul wrote:
| What they get is amphetamines, legally.
|
| 38% of stanford kids taking or selling drugs, legally,
| because they are rich kids: and the poor kids get jail time
| for buying it off them.
|
| Go USA.
|
| Wierd that no-one on this thread seems aware of it.
|
| There are two standard treatments for adhd: met & dexies
| midnight runners.
| bigfishrunning wrote:
| Taking the drugs legally, maybe; it is very much illegal
| to sell the kind of amphetamines used to treat ADHD.
| Ritalin, for instance, is a schedule II drug, and it is a
| felony to sell without a prescription.
| dantheman wrote:
| Getting a diagnosis to get more time to complete tests.
| https://accommodations.collegeboard.org/how-
| accommodations-w...
| teknopaul wrote:
| I don't understand how yous can be ignorant of this. In the
| USofA you get advertised at continuously by drug companies.
|
| Do you really think they spend that money advertising, and
| that you can then not buy the products?!?
|
| Sure, you need a corrupt doctor. But the amount of
| advertising tells you exactly the amount of corrupt doctors
| that can act as drug dealers for you.
|
| If someone is advertising something at you, it's because you
| can get it and you are potential market.
|
| Not rocket science.
|
| Somehow the whole country has collective blindness to this
| fact that is scarily obvious to anyone from outside the USofA
| that drops by.
|
| Drugs adverts for prescription drugs should be illegal:
| because there is no legal justification for them.
| ThrowMeAway1618 wrote:
| >If someone is advertising something at you, it's because
| you can get it and you are potential market.
|
| >Not rocket science.
|
| Yep. I see adverts for Psoriasis and so, of course, I
| developed Psoriasis although I never had it before I saw
| the adverts. I see adverts for Chronic Obstructive
| Pulmonary Disease (COPD) and, of course, then developed it
| because I am a "potential market."
|
| Even better, I see adverts for tampons, sanitary pads and
| "feminine' deodorants. As such, I underwent gender
| reassignment surgery so I could then purchase said products
| because I'm a "potential market."
|
| Yes, the above is satirical. And no, I don't purchase
| products because " they spend that money advertising"
|
| If I show you an advert for brassieres, are you then
| _forced_ to purchase them because of all the money spent on
| such adverts? Are you even _slightly_ tempted to do so?
|
| If I show you an advert for _literal_ snake oil as a cure-
| all, are you then powerless to stop yourself from
| purchasing it?
|
| I hate to break it to you, but we Americans aren't slaves
| to, or required to spend money based on, consumer
| advertising.
|
| Heck, I don't drink Coca-Cola or Budweiser. If what you say
| were true, I'd literally be drowning in that garbage.
|
| Please take your ridiculous stereotypes elsewhere.
|
| Edit: Fixed typos.
| mrgoldenbrown wrote:
| Cheating is the malicious interpretation, same way steroids
| are considered cheating in other competitions. (college
| admission is a competition, there are fixed number of seats
| and you cheating to get a seat hurts someone else.)
| swatcoder wrote:
| > people that are just in the line where they are very
| productive workers anyway
|
| Of course, that applies to _everybody_ who achieves a stable
| career at all.
|
| Exceedingly few people (if anyone) are competent and capable at
| everything, even when you're just talking about basic skills
| that are handy for common, everyday work.
|
| Your doctor may be a incorrigibly terrible driver, your bus
| driver may pass out at the sight of blood, your Michelin chef
| might have been never made sense of geometry, your mechanic may
| need deep focus just to read through a manual, your bricklayer
| might go into a panic if they need to stand in front of a
| crowd, your bartender may never have experienced a clear
| thought before 11am.
|
| Struggling with some things, even deeply struggling, is
| _normal_ if not universal. But once you age past the gauntlet
| of general education that specifically tests all these things,
| the hope is that you can just sort of flow like water into a
| valuable enough community role that you can take care of
| yourself and help some people.
|
| A lot of modern, aspiring-middle-class and online culture stirs
| up an idea that there must be something unusual about you if
| you find this thing or that thing difficult, when the reality
| is that _everybody_ has a few things that they struggle with
| quite a lot, and that the people who seem like they don 't have
| just succeeded at avoiding, delegating, or hiding whatever it
| is that's hard for them.
| qazxcvbnmlp wrote:
| Well put.
|
| > A lot of modern, aspiring-middle-class and online culture
|
| Theres also a pernicious way of identifying with the
| struggle. Instead of I have trouble focusing in certain
| situations, so maybe I should find ways to spend my time
| (careers, hobbies) that work well with that. We instead go to
| 'I have ADHD' and my 'job' should make special accommodations
| for me.
|
| Regardless of whether a job should or should not make
| accommodations. It's not a very helpful construct to think
| they should. It removes agency from the person experiencing
| the struggle. Which in turn puts them farther from finding a
| place that they would fit in well.
|
| For the vast majority of behaviors (ADHD, attachment issues,
| autism, etc) they exist on a continuum and are
| adaptive/helpful in certain situations. By pathologizing
| them, we(society) loose touch for what they mean in our life.
| It also makes discourse hard because the (this is causing me
| to truly not be able to function) gets mixed in with the
| (this is a way that my brain behaves, but I can mostly live a
| life).
| paulpauper wrote:
| _Being diagnosed with a learning disability or other type
| of neuro-divergency does not automatically entitle someone
| to special treatment. The vast majority of that 38% are
| likely just "diagnosed" people who are asking for no
| special treatment at all._
|
| Hmm ..the irony is that jobs that require the least amount
| of credentials have the least accommodations. White collar
| jobs, especially in tech, seem to have so many
| accommodations or delays and extra time. Think how often
| employees come in late or delay work. HR exists to
| accommodate these requests. College, and school in general,
| has far fewer accommodations and flexibility than seen in
| most work environments, save for low-skilled jobs where
| puantiality is necessary.
| barchar wrote:
| I don't see how you spending time in ways that work well
| with your challenges is different from your job providing
| accomodations, except that if your employer is willing to
| work with you then you don't have to randomly roll the dice
| until you come up with an employer where things happen to
| work in whatever way you wanted.
|
| It's not like one of the accomodations on the table is "not
| doing your job"
| swatcoder wrote:
| The difference reduces to:
|
| 1. The career I would like to have, and the life I desire
| to live, is my free choice. Once I've made that choice,
| the community's responsibility is to give me whatever I
| need so that I can apply myself to that career and live
| the life I imagine for myself.
|
| vs
|
| 2. I have certain capabilities and limitations. The
| community has certain needs. If there's any way for me to
| do so, it's my responsibility to figure out how my
| capabilities can service the community's needs,
| respecting my limitations, and it's the community's
| reciprocal responsibility to make sure my contribution is
| fairly acknowledged so that I can live a secure and
| constructive life. I'll figure out the rest from there.
| qazxcvbnmlp wrote:
| The difference is how you relate to the job providing
| accommodations. If you know certain employers are more
| willing and able to provide accommodations then you can
| consciously weigh that piece of information when
| considering a job/career field.
|
| By consciously accepting who you are and how you work
| with the world, it lets you navigate better in it. For
| some people that is just feeling it out and ending up in
| a career that fits them. For some people, it might be
| getting a diagnosis. The end result might be the same.
| hamdingers wrote:
| > maybe I should find ways to spend my time (careers,
| hobbies) that work well with that
|
| You're really close to getting it.
|
| Students in school _do not have this flexibility_. They are
| required to be there, an 8th grader has no control and
| little influence over how their time is spent, or whether
| their tasks are a good match for their abilities.
|
| So the only option _in school_ is accommodation. There are
| some who continue to expect that into adulthood, but the
| vast majority of kids diagnosed with ADHD do not seek
| accommodation in their professional life.
|
| Why? Because they do exactly what you propose. They find
| careers that match their disposition.
| qazxcvbnmlp wrote:
| This is an important distinction. Indeed, many behaviors
| (ie attachment issues) that are maladaptive for an adult
| can be adaptive to a child and it is important to not
| change those without taking into account the environment
| a child is in.
|
| An 8th grader may not have control over how their time is
| spent, but an attuned response from the people around
| them will help the child adapt.
|
| A child experiencing: 'everyone around me can take this
| test, but i cannot, I must be dumb'
|
| vs
|
| A child experiencing: 'everyone around me can take this
| test, but i cannot, I must be dumb' and a caring figure
| in their life explaining to them 'you show traits of
| ADHD, this commonly makes it harder for you to focus on
| things like a math test. it really hurts when you fail
| the test and you wanted to get an A. Why don't you try
| again at the same problem at home, I believe in you. And
| maybe I will talk to your teacher about some extra time
| for the next test. We can't always get this, and even if
| you don't pass the test it's ok.'
| Hizonner wrote:
| > But once you age past the gauntlet of general education
| that specifically tests all these things, the hope is that
| you can just sort of flow like water into a valuable enough
| community role that you can take care of yourself and help
| some people.
|
| ... provided that that gauntlet hasn't stuck a label on you
| that makes everybody think you're unsuitable for _any_ role,
| and provided that it 's bothered to develop the abilities you
| _do_ have, and provided that other people aren 't being
| unnecessarily rigid about what roles they'll allow to exist.
|
| Sure, maybe it's stupid to frame it as "THIS counts as being
| disabled and THAT doesn't"... but we have a world where many
| systems have decided to do that, and may act slightly less
| insanely inflexible if they've put you in the "disabled"
| bucket.
|
| If everybody has some limitations, maybe everybody should get
| some accommodations. You know, so that they can actually
| contribute using their strengths. But I'm not holding my
| breath.
| brailsafe wrote:
| > Of course, that applies to everybody who achieves a stable
| career at all.
|
| This stuck out to me, because even in tech, especially after
| being diagnosed with ADHD (out of desperately failing to
| adapt, despite technically being reasonably competent) my
| career and statistically that of many others is _normally_
| anything but stable. An overwhelming percentage of jobs and
| disciplines do not have any real affordances for just a
| little variation from the norm, and people broadly still do
| not believe the condition presents anything but hilarious
| superficial differences, but that otherwise if the person
| shares one skill with other employees they should be capable
| of being an arbitrary cog like any other.
|
| "Other people are capable of showing up on time, why can't
| you!?"
|
| "Well, I have ADHD, I have to take medication to regulate my
| dopamine levels and struggle with time blindless, it's a real
| problem that I wish I didn't have, but I do my best given
| regularly switching contexts and priorities"
|
| "Ya, great, that's cute but show up on time, are we on the
| same page?"
|
| "No, but I'll say yes because you can't understand, I have no
| choice, and I'll continue doing what I'm doing until you fire
| me for not meeting your expectations, even if they have
| nothing to do with the skill I do actually have and gravitate
| towards, and would like to continue applying in service of
| company growth or whatever"
|
| "Great, then we're on the same page, and I'll just start
| checking in on you more frequently because clearly you're
| retarded, thanks"
|
| ----
|
| The only people who do realistically get accomodations are
| either in super niche fields, are absolutely exceptional in
| their niche field, or are just on their own or in industries
| that require none of the normal things associated with their
| discipline.
| vl wrote:
| Have you tried Adderall? It gives extreme competitive edge.
| Just to get legal and easy access to performance-enhancing
| drugs in elite educational (aka competitive) setting it makes
| sense to get "disability".
|
| And given how loosely these conditions are defined, it's not
| even cheating in the true sense of the word.
| antupis wrote:
| If you have ADHD, for neurotypical people it might feel that
| you are performing better but results will not improve
| https://www.cam.ac.uk/research/news/smart-drugs-can-
| decrease...
| phainopepla2 wrote:
| It's a small study and the "knapsack task" probably does
| not generalize to writing a paper or coding or something.
| Far from dispositive.
| greygoo222 wrote:
| Utter bullshit engineered to convince students not to do
| drugs. Adderall doesn't make you magically better at
| solving the knapsack problem, it's not NZT-48 from
| Limitless. That's not why anyone takes it.
| barchar wrote:
| They really don't, and if they did then would it be so bad if
| people who didn't "need" them took them?
|
| Obviously if there's safety issues but for stimulants unsafe
| doses will 100% always decrease performance, because they'll
| affect sleep.
| Aurornis wrote:
| > Have you tried Adderall? It gives extreme competitive edge.
|
| Before readers rush out to acquire Adderall, note that
| "trying" it does not give an accurate picture of what it's
| like to take it long-term. It has a high discontinuation rate
| because people read comments like this online or borrow a
| dose from their friend and think they're going to be running
| around like Bradley Cooper in Limitless for the rest of their
| career.
|
| A new patient who _tries_ Adderall will feel a sense of
| euphoria, energy, and motivation that is temporary. This
| effect does not last. This is why the Reddit ADHD forums are
| full of people posting "I just took my first dose and I'm so
| happy I could cry" followed a few weeks later by "Why did my
| Adderall stop working?". The focus part is still mostly
| working, but no drug is going to make you feel happy,
| energized, and euphoric for very long.
|
| > Just to get legal and easy access to performance-enhancing
| drugs in elite educational (aka competitive) setting it makes
| sense to get "disability".
|
| You're confusing two different things. Registering with the
| school's disability office is orthogonal to getting a
| prescription for anything.
| skeeter2020 wrote:
| Steriods will give you a massive physical advantage too. If
| you're not doing something with a governing body and get them
| prescribed you're golden.
| Aurornis wrote:
| This is actually another growing problem: TRT clinics will
| prescribe testosterone to virtually anyone who requests it.
| Among new TRT patients, a large number of them didn't even
| have bloodwork drawn before receiving their first
| prescription.
|
| Many of the TRT clinics also hide the fact that going on
| TRT results in testicular atrophy and lifelong dependence.
| The forums and Reddits are full of people who decided that
| injecting testosterone every couple days for the rest of
| their life isn't all it's cracked up to be are realizing
| that it's not so simple for everyone to get off of it, even
| with all the HCG, SERMs, and PCT in the world.
| paulpauper wrote:
| _where just following the conversation is a problem, while they
| are outright bored with the highest difficulty technical AP
| classes available, because they find them very easy._
|
| Then accommodations should not be needed if they are so easy,
| unless I am missing something?
| eightys3v3n wrote:
| Accommodations don't have to be used in all classes. They
| might need accommodations in an English class and no
| accommodations in the scientific or math classes. Usually
| this isn't evaluated per class, it's evaluated per student
| and then it's up to the student to use or not use the
| accommodations for the various classes they take.
| estimator7292 wrote:
| I nearly failed high school and I flunked or dropped out of
| college four times. I just absolutely cannot work within the
| framework of modern schooling.
|
| I say this as humbly as possible, but still I'm one of the best
| engineers I know and working on some pretty advanced stuff. And
| yes, I'm rather autistic.
|
| The way my brain works is just fundamentally incompatible with
| school. Starting from fundamentals and building up just doesn't
| work for me. Especially when we spend six months on
| fundamentals that I grokked in the first three weeks. The way I
| learn is totally backwards. I start from the top, high-level
| concepts and dig down into the fundamentals when I hit
| something I don't understand. The tradeoff is that the way I
| think is so radically different from my colleagues that I can
| come up with novel solutions to any problem posed to me. On the
| other hand, solving problems is almost a compulsion.
|
| That said, if I had the option I'd choose a normal childhood
| over being a smart engineer. Life has been extremely unkind to
| me.
| paulpauper wrote:
| _I say this as humbly as possible, but still I 'm one of the
| best engineers I know and working on some pretty advanced
| stuff. And yes, I'm rather autistic._
|
| lol...there is nothing humble about this statement. >50% of
| people think they're above average.
| op00to wrote:
| And pointing this out adds to the discourse here how?
| pessimizer wrote:
| > As I grew up in the 80s, there were two kinds of gifted kids
| in school: The kind that would ace everything anyway, and the
| kind that, for a variety of reasons, lacked the regulation
| abilities to manage the school setting well, with the slow
| classes and such. A lot of very smart people just failed
| academically, because the system didn't work for them. Some of
| those improved their executive function enough as they went
| past their teenage years, and are now making a lot of money in
| difficult fields.
|
| Somehow it is impossible for people to blame the system, but
| instead they diagnose physical deficits in children based on
| their inability to adjust to the system.
|
| Maybe the random way we chose to mass educate children a couple
| hundred years ago isn't perfect, and children are not broken?
| bluGill wrote:
| Blame the system is only useful if there is a
| different/changed system that would be better. The current
| system isn't perfect, but if you can't handle it I'm not
| aware of any change that would be worth it - there are a lot
| of changes that would get worse results (sometimes for
| everyone, sometimes for a different subgroup of people).
| Remember results is not how well you do in school, it is how
| well you do in life after school that counts. (economics is
| only one measure of this, it is important because wealth is a
| good proxy for a lot of useful things like enough food)
| fwip wrote:
| If you're not familiar, you might like reading about the
| social model of disability:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_model_of_disability
|
| TL;DR: Disability is not inherent in difference, but rather a
| combination of the difference and an environment in which
| that difference is not well-supported. For an analogy - a
| deep-sea fish is blind, but not disabled by their blindness.
| Similarly, a kid who "can't sit still" isn't disabled unless
| we put them in an environment where they have to.
| IshKebab wrote:
| > The percentages of workers that are neurodivergent is much
| higher than usual, but it's not as if tech hires them out of
| compassion, but because there's a big cadre or neurodivergent
| people that are just in the line where they are very productive
| workers anyway.
|
| There are certainly way more neurodivergent people in tech. But
| 38%?? I don't think so. And I think you're conflating HN
| nerdery with actual medical issues that mean you need extra
| time on tests. I'd believe that e.g. 30% of HN are pretty weird
| nerds, but there's absolutely no way that means they all need
| extra time on tests.
| cryzinger wrote:
| > Because they really are both very smart and disabled at the
| same time.
|
| There's a term for exactly this: "twice exceptional"!
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Twice_exceptional
| skeeter2020 wrote:
| Not only is this such a cringe term (we may describe poor
| aptitude in an area as an exception but exceptional?) it's
| also not accurate. If you want a milquetoast label call them
| "spikey" to denote the array of dimensions and the variance,
| or multimodal or similar.
| pavon wrote:
| This focuses on students seeking diagnoses. But I would expect
| most of them have already been diagnosed long before college.
| Parents with high expectations of their children are more likely
| to seek diagnoses. If you've spent your childhood being told you
| are ADHD and on Ritalin, then it is natural you would self-
| identify as such in college.
| oefrha wrote:
| > "It's just not. It's rich kids getting extra time on tests."
| Talented students get to college, start struggling, and run for a
| diagnosis to avoid bad grades.
|
| Okay, I was an undergrad at Stanford a decade ago, I graduated
| with two majors (math, physics) and almost another minor (CS) so
| I took more credits than most and sat in more tests than most,
| and I don't think I've seen a single person given extra time on
| tests; and some of the courses had more than a hundred people in
| them, with test takers almost filling the auditorium in Hewlett
| Teaching Center if memory serves. Article says the stat "has
| grown at a breathtaking pace" "over the past decade and half" and
| uses "at UC Berkeley, it has nearly quintupled over the past 15
| years" as a shocking example, so I would assume the stat was at
| least ~10% at Stanford a decade ago. So where were these people
| during my time? Only in humanities? Anyone got first hand
| experience?
| rovr138 wrote:
| Or it wasn't diagnosed, defined, or the diagnosis wasn't good.
| Doesn't mean that they weren't there.
| oefrha wrote:
| TFA is specifically about students claiming disabilities to
| get extra time on tests. I'm saying from first hand
| experience that I didn't know a single instance of anyone
| getting extra time on tests, and wondering where those
| alleged instances were occurring. Anything that "wasn't
| diagnosed, defined, or the diagnosis wasn't good" (huh?) has
| nothing to do with the 38% stat, or anything else in the
| article, really.
| OneDeuxTriSeiGo wrote:
| > So where were these people during my time?
|
| Testing accomodations are generally done at a separate time. So
| students with an accomodation requiring a low distraction
| environment or extra test time would all take their test after
| the main test takers.
|
| This came with the dual advantage of providing an alternate
| time for students who had excused absences to take the test as
| well.
|
| TLDR: You don't normally see the students with accomodations
| during tests unless you also have an accomodation or you had a
| conflict with the test time/date.
| oefrha wrote:
| Most of my courses beyond freshman year were 10-20 people
| where I basically know everyone (unless they never come to
| class), so I would know if they weren't showing up at exams.
| I'm pretty sure if these people were evenly distributed I
| would notice every exam for every class missing 1-2 people.
| So this is not it.
| OneDeuxTriSeiGo wrote:
| It really depends on the environment tbh. I know just for
| the "low distraction environment" accomodations, those
| normally aren't used for small classes but they are used
| for the big exams where they stuff the entire freshman
| class in the program into a series of auditoriums.
|
| And of course some professors do double time accommodations
| by having the students take the test with everyone else and
| then follow the teacher to their office to finish the exam
| afterwards but tbh I didn't see that very often.
| devnullbrain wrote:
| At another university I once had extenuating circumstances
| preventing me from taking an exam in one of the main exam
| halls. I was invited to take it in a normal classroom, where a
| session was being held at the same time for people who get
| additional time. I was able to start later and still finish
| with the normal allowance but without having a chance to
| collude with other students.
| loremip wrote:
| They go to other rooms. I had several friends who would not be
| around during the exam days. On a high stress day like final
| exam day it's hard to notice but they were definitely gone (so
| like 1-2 people in a 20ish person class). UC system, mid 2010s.
| ixwt wrote:
| Timed tests encourage wrote memorization and reflexive knowledge.
| They don't encourage what is reflective of the modern real world
| knowledge recollection. In almost all scenarios, you have a book
| to reference for knowledge, much less search engines (and now
| LLMs). Almost nothing is memorized today, in the work world. What
| you know, in my experience, comes from frequent usage. Your
| timespan to work on most things is on the order of days, not
| minutes or an hour.
|
| Tests should be open book, open notes, and an extensive amount of
| time to do the test. The questions should be such that they
| demonstrate an understanding of the material, not just how well
| you can parrot back information.
|
| Whilst I would love tests to be open internet, this lends itself
| to very easy cheating. The material being taught and what notes
| you take about it should be enough to answer any questions posed
| to you about the material. Especially those that demonstrate an
| understanding of the material.
| fwip wrote:
| Sort of. There are some things that a person entering a field
| is expected to know without needing to look them up, because if
| you don't know it you won't develop good intuition or be able
| to execute your work in a timely manner. Most of the stuff you
| learn in your freshman year is this type of thing, while the
| later years tend to have more open-book tests.
|
| This is also the kind of thing that you check for in an
| interview - somebody who needs to look up how to write a for
| loop isn't going to get hired as a C programmer, and somebody
| who isn't familiar with Ohm's law will flunk their electronics
| interview. So there's a very pragmatic reason to make sure that
| students have the basics memorized.
| binary132 wrote:
| I have a sneaking suspicion that a surprising number of these
| disabilities require treatment with performance-enhancing drugs.
| SoftTalker wrote:
| At the gym I go to, there are a lot of college-age kids. I
| overhear them talking about getting on Ritalin or Adderall to
| help them study. Not because they really need it, it's just
| seen as a "performance hack" to get an advantage. They talk
| about what doctor they went to and how easy it was to get a
| prescription.
| ekropotin wrote:
| I read somewhere that Adderall does not improve cognitive
| function in people without ADHD and in some cases can even
| decrease it.
| rendang wrote:
| Have you ever taken a decent dose of an amphetamine? It
| isn't going to make you smarter but it will almost
| certainly boost your energy and ability to get stuff done.
| binary132 wrote:
| >takes amphetamine
|
| >performance enhanced
|
| >welp, guess I have ADHD!
|
| By this metric everyone has ADHD.
| lotsofpulp wrote:
| That has been a thing since I went to college 20 years ago.
| zamalek wrote:
| > The students at America's elite universities are supposed to be
| the smartest, most promising young people in the country. And
| yet, shocking percentages of them are claiming academic
| accommodations designed for students with learning disabilities.
|
| What the actual... Lack of journalistic integrity rears its head
| once again. Executive function and social challenges do not make
| a person "not smart."
|
| Going back to the core of the problem, I feel that this does need
| to be controlled. It's one thing to disability signal online to
| gain clout, it's a completely different thing to drain resources
| from genuinely disabled folks. Disabilities need to come with
| diagnoses.
| georgeecollins wrote:
| Maybe the smartest, most promising young people in the country
| realize it is smart to claim a disability.
|
| I am not saying they don't have one. I am saying some people
| have realized ways it helps to point it out and maybe not
| everyone is clued into that.
| zamalek wrote:
| Fundamentally I would be fine with this, the system exploits
| us so it's only fair to exploit it in return. Practically,
| however, my concern remains for people who need resources to
| support them.
| staplefire wrote:
| Accommodating for disability is cheesing the test score. Cheesing
| a test score is cheesing the metric. Cheesing the metric is
| always some form of lying, usually to yourself.
|
| - You're lying to yourself about how good of a fit your are for
| the program.
|
| - The professor/administration is getting inaccurate data about
| the teaching efficacy.
|
| If you want to know if you can be a civil engineer despite your
| disability, the last thing you should do is correct for the
| disability in your primary success metric.
| Hizonner wrote:
| You show a touching level of confidence in the idea that test
| scores are a useful metric of anything anybody cares about...
| especially after they're Goodharted into oblivion. Maybe the
| extreme ends of the ranges are, if you compensate for noise
| sources. And giving somebody more time on the test may indeed
| be compensating for a noise source.
| aynyc wrote:
| I don't know about Stanford students' actual disability, so I
| can't say much to that. I went to shitty high school and decent
| middle school in relatively poor middle class neighborhood. Now,
| I live in a wealthy school district. The way parents in the two
| different neighborhood treat "learning disability" is mind
| blowing.
|
| In my current school district, IEP (Individual Education Program)
| is assigned to students that need help, and parents are actively
| and explicitly ask for it, even if the kids are borderline.
| Please note that, this doesn't take away resource for regular
| kids, in fact, classrooms with IEP student get more teachers so
| everyone in that class benefits. IEP students are also assigned
| to regular classroom so they are not treated differently and
| their identities aren't top secret. Mind you, the parents here
| can easily afford additional help if needed.
|
| In other neighborhood, a long time family friend with two young
| children, the older one doesn't talk in school, period. Their
| speech is clearly behind. The parents refuse to have the kids
| assign IEP and insist that as long as the child is not
| disruptive, there is no reason to do so. Why the parents don't
| want to get help, because they feel the older child will get
| labelled and bullied and treated differently. The older child
| hates school and they are only in kindergarten. Teachers don't
| know what to do with the child.
| nathan_douglas wrote:
| My kid hated school in kindergarten as well. As did I. I didn't
| get any kind of intervention, and I feel like that set me on a
| terrible course.
|
| My kid, mercifully, was diagnosed and received intervention in
| the form of tutoring, therapy, that sort of thing. He still has
| weapons-grade ADHD, and his handwriting is terrible
| (dysgraphia), but he seems to have beat the dyslexia and loves
| reading almost as much as his mother and I do. He's happier,
| healthier, and has a brighter future.
|
| I really, really hope your friend comes to understand, somehow,
| that their kid needs intervention, and will benefit
| tremendously from it.
| skeeter2020 wrote:
| I'm in a upper-middle neighbourhood and my kids go to public
| school. Not having a individual learning plan is the exception
| (I think that makes me double-exceptional). Classrooms DO NOT
| get more education assistant resources and combine this will
| the move to integrate kids who ehsitorically wouldn't consider
| attending regular school means teachers spend all their time
| managing the classroom and the parents.
|
| >> the older one doesn't talk in school, period.
|
| If the kid is completely non-verbal there's no way they should
| be in a class with regular kids. This is extremely unfair to
| the class.
| windows_hater_7 wrote:
| Does this number include housing accommodations? They are
| provided through the same disability office. I have dry eye
| disease, and when the relative humidity was 19% in my dorm room I
| requested an accommodation to have a humidifier. I'm sure that
| type of accommodation wouldn't have been approved in the past.
| shetaye wrote:
| Regarding Stanford specifically, I did not see the number broken
| down by academic or residential disability (in the underlying
| Atlantic article). This is relevant, because
|
| > Some students get approved for housing accommodations,
| including single rooms and emotional-support animals.
|
| buries the lede, at least for Stanford. It is incredibly
| commonplace for students to "get an OAE" (Office of Accessible
| Education) exclusively to get a single room. Moreover,
| residential accommodations allow you to be placed in housing
| prior to the general population and thus grant larger (& better)
| housing selection.
|
| I would not be surprised if a majority of the cited Stanford
| accommodations were not used for test taking but instead used
| exclusively for housing (there are different processes internally
| for each).
|
| edit: there is even a practice of "stacking" where certain
| disabilities are used to strategically reduce the subset of dorms
| in which you can live, to the point where the only intersection
| between your requirements is a comfy single, forcing Admin to put
| you there. It is well known, for example, that a particularly
| popular dorm is the nearest to the campus clinic. If you can get
| an accommodation requiring proximity to the clinic, you have
| narrowed your choices to that dorm or another. One more
| accommodation and you are guaranteed the good dorm.
| lostmsu wrote:
| I suppose cheating to get housing benefits is less of a
| dumpster fuck vs cheating to get ahead of other people in
| education.
| margalabargala wrote:
| The word "cheating" is loaded with a lot of values and
| judgement that I think makes it inappropriate to use the way
| you did.
|
| There's a point where it's not immoral to leverage systems
| available to you to land yourself in a better situation.
| Avoiding increasingly-overcrowded housing situations is I
| think one of them.
|
| If Stanford's standards for these housing waivers are
| sufficiently broad that 38% of their students quality, isn't
| that a problem with Stanford's definitions, not with
| "cheating"?
| ahmeneeroe-v2 wrote:
| In the culture I grew up in, this was considered cheating.
| delichon wrote:
| A culture that honored truth telling and integrity. Was
| that long ago or far away?
| shermantanktop wrote:
| "culture i grew up in" could easily mean "what my
| parents/older relatives told me they did, when they told
| me to be like them."
|
| Once you grow up, you realize your parents were human,
| made self-interested decisions, and then told themselves
| stories that made their actions sound principled. Some
| more than others, of course.
| IAmBroom wrote:
| I'll skip the "my parents" part, because I'm an old, but
| ... NO ONE had independent housing their Freshman year in
| college at my hometown uni, unless they had prior
| residency in the area (were commuting from home).
|
| So, yeah: that morality did exist, and not just in
| fables.
| BeetleB wrote:
| I went to a mediocre undergrad, and a top 5 school for
| grad. The difference in morals was quite notable, and
| cheating was much more prevalent in the latter (not just
| in classes, but for things like this as well).
| Cpoll wrote:
| This is tragedy of the commons exactly. Whether it's moral
| depends entirely on the ethical theory you subscribe to.
|
| > a problem with Stanford's definitions
|
| Only if students aren't lying on their application.
| swatcoder wrote:
| > There's a point where it's not immoral to leverage
| systems available to you to land yourself in a better
| situation.
|
| That sounds loaded with a lot of value judgment. I don't
| think it's inappropriate for you to suggest it, but I think
| you'll find that a lot of people who value equitability,
| collaboration, communalism, modesty, earnestness, or
| conservation of resources might not share that perspective
| with you.
|
| It turns out that people just disagree about values and are
| going to weigh judgment on others based on what they
| believe. You don't have to share their values, but you do
| kind of just need to be able to accept that judgment as
| theirs when you do things they malign.
| guelo wrote:
| What is the honorable value that leads to "I'll get mine
| screw everybody else"?
| socalgal2 wrote:
| I live in liberal cities. Nearly every car drive and
| bicycle rider has the attitude "F everyone else, I'm
| going to break every law if I find it inconvenient to
| myself. Who cares if it affects others"
|
| This is not in alignment with "equitability,
| collaboration, communalism, modesty, earnestness, or
| conservation of resources"
|
| People claim those values but rarely actually follow
| them.
| margalabargala wrote:
| I worded it in a way flexible to meet everyone's morals.
| Absent someone trying to performatively live a truly
| philosophically deontological life every person has some
| line where they will avail themselves of some available
| lever to remove some awful situation even if someone else
| might call it "cheating".
|
| Some recent examples where large segments of the
| population did this are 1) with medical marijuana cards,
| which make weed legal to anyone willing to claim to have
| anxiety or difficulty sleeping, or 2) emotional support
| animals on airlines, where similarly one can claim
| anything to get a prescription that, if travelling with a
| pet, opts them out of the sometimes-fatal always-
| unpleasant cargo hold travel.
|
| Plenty of people would call either of these cheating, but
| kind of like how "language is usage", so are morals in a
| society. If everyone is doing something that is available
| but "cheating", that society deems the result for people
| sufficiently valuable.
| lostmsu wrote:
| > The word "cheating" is loaded with a lot of values and
| judgement that I think makes it inappropriate to use the
| way you did.
|
| I'm glad you had no problem with "dumpster fuck".
| margalabargala wrote:
| Well, there's meaning and then there's personal style. I
| didn't want to cramp yours :-)
| groundzeros2015 wrote:
| The direct result of this thinking is that people who need
| the accommodation face difficulty in getting it.
|
| You don't have to return your shopping cart. You don't have
| to donate to the collection plate. You don't have to give a
| coworker recognition.
|
| But when everyone has an adversarial "get mine" attitude
| the systems have to be changed. Instead of assuming good
| intent they have to enforce it. Enforcement is very
| expensive and very unpleasant. (For example, maybe you need
| to rent the shopping cart.)
|
| Unfortunately enforcement is a self fulfilling cycle. When
| people see others cheating they feel they need to cheat
| just to not be left behind.
|
| You may be from a culture where this is the norm. Reflect
| on its impact and how we would really like to avoid this.
| shadowgovt wrote:
| > You don't have to donate to the collection plate
|
| Hey, if they stop using the money I donate to advertise
| that my neighbors are abominations in the eyes of God
| they can have my money again.
| mikkupikku wrote:
| The "collection plate" could just as well mean a
| panhandler's hat. The point is charitable giving, not
| christian specifically.
| zeroCalories wrote:
| The problem is that people simply have no investment in a
| community anymore. This is a direct consequence of
| globalization and capitalism. Travel to a foreign land,
| exploit the locals, and return home. Westerners are just
| now realizing that they're on the receiving end of it
| now.
| margalabargala wrote:
| I think you're reading more into what I said than what I
| intended.
|
| I'm not endorsing the specific behavior, but I am
| pointing out that if there's a "cheating" lever anyone
| can pull to improve their own situation, it will get
| pulled if people think it's justified.
|
| There's plenty that do get pulled and plenty that don't.
| In the US, SNAP fraud is sufficiently close to
| nonexistant that you can't tell the difference in
| benefits provided. But fraud surrounding lying about
| medical conditions to get a medical marijuana card is
| universal and accepted.
|
| The people we're talking about here are teenagers that
| are told "if you have an ADHD diagnosis you can ask for
| and get your own room". The sort of systems thinking you
| are describing is not generally done by your average
| fresh high school graduate. This is therefore a Stanford
| problem.
| jay_kyburz wrote:
| If you lie (or exaggerate) about a disability and claim a
| benefit, you could be denying somebody with more serious
| disabilities getting the help they need.
| margalabargala wrote:
| I agree. That's not what's happening here.
|
| My understanding is that the requirement for the benefit
| being discussed here is "has had a diagnosis of ADHD,
| anxiety, etc".
|
| The problem lies in the combination of overdiagnosis and
| lax Stanford disability requirements. The teenagers
| honestly mentioning they have an ADHD diagnosis to get
| the benefit are not the problem, they are a symptom.
| iepathos wrote:
| I agree with you that cheating is a loaded word, but the
| question at the end here that the rules or standards enable
| users to work around it therefore it's not cheating is a
| bad semantic argument. We can use the exact same argument
| to excuse every kind of rule breaking that people do. If a
| hacker drains a billion dollars out of a smart contract,
| then they literally were only able to do so because the
| coded rules of the smart contract itself enabled it through
| whatever flaw the hacker identified. That doesn't make it
| less illegal or not cheating for the hacker. It feels like
| victim blaming to point the finger at the institution being
| exploited or people who get hacked and say its their
| problem not the individuals intentionally exploiting them.
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| > _a point where it 's not immoral to leverage systems
| available to you to land yourself in a better situation_
|
| That point is probably behind someone at Stanford.
| inglor_cz wrote:
| This attitude was one of the things that collapsed the
| former Eastern Bloc. "He who does not steal is stealing
| from his own family."
| nradov wrote:
| Stealing from work was so normalized in the former USSR
| that it wasn't even considered stealing, just "carrying
| out". Jobs in meatpacking facilities were highly desired
| because even though nominal wages were low, workers could
| make so much more by selling on the black market. The
| entire system was rotten from top to bottom.
| arolihas wrote:
| The problem is the promotion of values and behaviors that
| plague a low-trust society. I think making excuses for it
| is truly inappropriate and immoral.
| BeetleB wrote:
| While on the one hand I get where you're coming from, on
| the other hand I simply say "One does not have to go to
| Stanford."
| MangoToupe wrote:
| I suppose stanford does optimize for cheating, but this still
| seems excessive
| josefritzishere wrote:
| I use the word "cheating" like I use the word "hacking."
| The connotation can be either good or bad or contextually.
| You are defeating a system. The intent of the
| cheater/hacker is where we get into moral judgements. (This
| is a great sub-thread.)
| RachelF wrote:
| Sadly, society also optimizes for cheating. Meritocracy is
| a myth.
|
| In many ways Stanford is preparing students for the real
| world by encouraging cheating.
| only-one1701 wrote:
| This is what it comes down to
| trollbridge wrote:
| Or Stanford is influential enough that it creates the
| future new world, which now will have far more cheating.
| nextos wrote:
| I reviewed incoming applications during one Oxbridge
| academic application cycle. I raised some serious concerns,
| nobody listened, and therefore I refuse to take part on
| that any longer. Basically, lots of students are pretending
| to be disabled to enhance their chances with applications
| that are not particularly outstanding, taking spots from
| truly disabled students.
|
| All it takes is a lack of principles, exaggerating a bit,
| and getting a letter from a doctor. Imagine you have poor
| eyesight requiring a substantial correction, but you can
| still drive. That's not a disability. Now, if you create a
| compelling story inflating how this had an adverse impact
| on your education and get support letters, you might
| successfully cheat the system.
|
| I have seen several such cases. The admissions system is
| not effectively dealing with this type of fraud. In my
| opinion, a more serious audit-based system is necessary.
| Applicants that claim to be disabled but that are not
| recognized as such by the Government should go through some
| extra checks.
|
| Otherwise, we end up in the current situation where truly
| disabled students are extremely rare, but we have a large
| corpus of unscrupulous little Machiavelli, which is also
| worrying on its own sake.
| ahtihn wrote:
| > Imagine you have poor eyesight requiring a substantial
| correction, but you can still drive. That's not a
| disability
|
| It absolutely is a disability! The fact that it's easy to
| deal with it doesn't change that fact.
|
| I would not find it credible that it has a real impact on
| education though.
| nextos wrote:
| That was my point, it is not a disability from an
| education POV, or at least I would not consider it as
| such without an independent audit.
| reliabilityguy wrote:
| > The admissions system is not effectively dealing with
| this type of fraud.
|
| If I was the university I would _prefer_ these types of
| disabled students. Why not:
|
| 1. They are not really disabled, so I do not have to
| spend a lot of many for real accommodations
|
| 2. No need to deal with a higher chance (I'm guessing
| here) of academic difficulties
|
| 3. Basically, I hit disability metric without paying any
| cost!
| bee_rider wrote:
| In the context of academics I'd call it manipulating,
| exploiting or scamming the housing system, rather than
| cheating. Just because academic cheating is the center-of-
| gravity for this type of conversation, and, IMO, a much much
| bigger deal.
|
| If someone says they cheated in school, the first thing that
| pops into your head probably isn't that they might have
| gotten a single dorm room, right?
| only-one1701 wrote:
| This whole comment thread has been a crazy way to find out
| the ways people justify immoral behavior to themselves.
| femiagbabiaka wrote:
| This kind of minor fraud is completely normalized within
| middle and upper classes. It's half the way many kids end
| up at these schools in the first place, thinking of the
| "pay-to-play" scandal at USC a while back.
| only-one1701 wrote:
| So it's funny, I grew up upper middle class with an
| extremely severe morality taught to me re: this kind of
| thing -- integrity, etc. My entire adult life has been a
| lesson in how that's a maladaptive trait in America in
| 2025.
| afavour wrote:
| That has been one of the underpinning lessons of Trump's
| America to me. That playing by the rules and doing the
| right thing just makes me a sucker. Once a critical mass
| of people start to feel that way (if they don't already)
| it'll have a devastating effect on society.
|
| (when I say "Trump's America" I don't directly mean Trump
| himself, though he's certainly a prominent example of it.
| It feels like it's everywhere. One of the first times I
| really noticed it was the Netflix show "Inventing Anna".
| A dramatization of the real life story of a scammer, Anna
| Sorokin. Netflix paid her $320,000 for her story. She led
| a life of crime and successfully profited from it. Now
| she's been on Dancing with the Stars, essentially she's
| been allowed to become the celebrity she pretended to
| be.)
| saalweachter wrote:
| "It's always been this way" and "everyone does it" are
| what bad people say to justify themselves.
| watwut wrote:
| Donald Trump won twice. Republican party is mostly
| cheering everything he does. Ho won by lying a lot. Media
| mostly sanewashed it. Meanwhile, GOP complained they did
| not sanewashed it enough.
|
| HN itself and startup culture celebrate breaking the
| rules and laws to earn money. It is ok to break the law
| if you are rich enough. People here were defending
| gambling apps despite all the shady stuff they do just a
| few weeks ago.
|
| The white collar crime was barely prosecuted before, now
| the DOJ is loosing even the ability to prosecute it. So,
| I think the effect you worry about already happened, long
| time ago.
| giardini wrote:
| This isn't about Trump, it's about a lack of morality
| among students at one of the (formerly) most prestigious
| universities in the US.
| watwut wrote:
| Compared to what Trump does, what his voters cheers on,
| what the whole his party defends, those students are
| still basically saints. It is profoundly hypocritical to
| look at who gets to win and lead, to look at what does
| not bother his voters at all and then complain abet ...
| check notes ... someone getting single room on some
| exaggerated claim.
|
| And frankly, with HN praising Uber, Tesla and the rest of
| SV constantly breaking laws and rules companies, again,
| those students are practically saints.
|
| OP worried about this:
|
| > Once a critical mass of people start to feel that way
| (if they don't already) it'll have a devastating effect
| on society.
|
| Trump winning second time, the people who lead government
| and GOP, the critical mass thing already happened. There
| was no moral already among significant share of
| population. Trying to pearl clutch over students is
| almost funny in that context.
| BeetleB wrote:
| > If someone says they cheated in school, the first thing
| that pops into your head probably isn't that they might
| have gotten a single dorm room, right?
|
| It isn't, but if I'm on the hiring end and I know you play
| games like this, I'm not hiring you. I can work with less
| competent folks much better.
| seizethecheese wrote:
| I suppose so, but nonetheless it still likely harms the rest
| of the students who are honest by raising the price of
| housing for all students.
| echelon wrote:
| The diploma or credentials should be marked with the
| conditions of admission. That would prevent abuse from
| those who don't or shouldn't qualify for special admission
| conditions.
| crooked-v wrote:
| ...and punish those who genuinely develop or suffer from
| some new condition after admittal.
| aaronbwebber wrote:
| It means that the action we should take in response to this
| article is "building more dorms with singles" rather than "we
| need to rethink the way that we are making accommodations for
| disabilities in educational contexts".
|
| That seems like an important distinction, and makes the rest
| of the article (which focuses on educational accommodations)
| look mistaken.
| IgorPartola wrote:
| I worked in residential life while in college and can tell
| you that placing freshmen in singles is a horrible idea. It
| leads to isolation and lets mental health issues fester.
| Some need it but you do not want to place anyone who
| doesn't into a room alone especially in their first year.
| tomrod wrote:
| Meh. I think you're overstating it. To meet your
| anecdata, I had both the first college year, and single >
| double by a large margin.
| Onawa wrote:
| It depends on the person. I lived alone in my last year
| of undergrad and it sent me into a deep depression. I
| figured out that living alone was too much isolation for
| me and moved back in with a roommate. That helped to pull
| me out of my depression and be able to finish my degree.
| shetaye wrote:
| I agree in that freshmen should get the "experience" at
| least once. However, the way Stanford has arranged
| housing has meant that a good number of students will not
| live in a single for any of their 4 years.
| iso1631 wrote:
| Yet here in the UK it's perfectly normal. When I went to
| uni in 2000 in our halls there were 15 rooms per floor
| ber block, 2 of which were twins and 13 were single.
|
| The people in the twins were not happy - they hadn't
| asked for them.
|
| I knew one person who dropped out in the first 3 months
| (for mental purposes), and that was someone who shared a
| room.
| michaelt wrote:
| Before you went to college, did you have a bedroom to
| yourself in your parents' home?
| AlexandrB wrote:
| Ridiculous comparison. First, neither I nor anyone I know
| had a room where we could _lock our parents out_. Second,
| your parents actually care about you and if you spent 24+
| hours in there without coming out they 'd check on you
| (probably much sooner actually). No such luck in a dorm.
| shetaye wrote:
| True, but unfortunately the response from Stanford has been
| to introduce triple and quad rooms ;)
|
| This is not entirely their fault. Stanford is subject to
| Santa Clara County building regulations, and those tend not
| to be friendly to large university developments (or any
| large developments for that matter).
|
| I vaguely recall the recent Escondido Graduate Village
| Residences (EVGR) construction taking a while to get
| through the regulatory pipeline.
|
| The true underlying issue here is just that there is _not
| enough quality housing for the number of students Stanford
| admits._
| outside2344 wrote:
| I mean, they watch our president, who got a JET for god knows
| what, and after seeing that, why shouldn't they grab for the
| bag?
| Aurornis wrote:
| Cheating to get limited housing benefits starves those
| limited resources from truly disabled students who actually
| need them.
|
| Also, there are academic components to disability cheating.
| As the article notes, registering for a disability at some of
| these universities grants you additional time to take tests.
| outside2344 wrote:
| Just training for working at McKinsey after graduation
| Invictus0 wrote:
| Navigating Bureaucracy 101
| TeMPOraL wrote:
| Given the current pace of changes and levels of uncertainty
| about the labor market 5-10 years from now, this may
| actually be the most useful skill-set the university is
| teaching students today.
| op00to wrote:
| I've lived with enough nightmare roommates in my college
| experience to know many people probably have some sort of
| disability that precludes them from having a roommate.
| rurban wrote:
| Add it to their LinkedIn and final evaluation and the problem
| solves itself
| lumost wrote:
| They lead with the headline that most of these students have a
| mental health disability - particularly ADHD. Is it surprising
| that legalized Amphetamines drive teenagers to higher
| performance for a short period in their lives? Adderall and
| other amphetamines only have problems with long term usage.
|
| It should be expected that some portion of the teenage
| population sees a net-benefit from Amphetamines for the
| duration of late high school/college. It's unlikely that that
| net-benefit holds for the rest of their lives.
| notrealyme123 wrote:
| Wow that's interesting! Could you share your sources?
| mikkupikku wrote:
| Source for amphetamines being a performance enhancing drug?
| Try some lol.
|
| Really, they're habit forming and destructive so don't take
| them, but the reason they're so popular is they really do
| kick you up.
| Aurornis wrote:
| > Try some lol.
|
| Trying amphetamines classically gives short-term euphoria
| and confidence boost.
|
| There have been a few studies on this. If you give
| college students amphetamines they will report performing
| dramatically better, but their actual performance is
| maybe slightly improved at best and some measures are
| worsened: https://www.mdpi.com/2226-4787/6/3/58
|
| The notable thing is that they all _report_ doing much
| better despite the actual results not matching their
| self-assessment.
|
| So don't "try some" and then think you're going to be
| speeding around like a superhuman for the rest of your
| life if you get a prescription.
| izacus wrote:
| It's much more likely that ADHD diagnosis is easier to get
| when trying to get disability benefits and has practically no
| downsides for the student.
|
| It's much harder to fake deafness or blindness to get that
| extra housing and exam benefits.
| ultrarunner wrote:
| > Adderall and other amphetamines only have problems with
| long term usage.
|
| My research was done a long time ago. I understood Ritalin to
| have mild neurotoxic effects, but Adderall et al to be
| essentially harmless. Do you have a source for the benefits
| giving way to problems long-term?
|
| Regardless, your overall point is interesting. Presumably,
| these drugs are (ridiculously tightly) controlled to prevent
| society-wide harm. If that ostensible harm isn't reflected in
| reality, and there is a net benefit in having a certain age
| group accelerate (and, presumably, deepen) their education,
| perhaps this type of overwhelming regulatory control is a
| mistake. In that sense, it's a shame that these policies are
| imposed federally, as comparative data would be helpful.
| Aurornis wrote:
| > I understood Ritalin to have mild neurotoxic effects, but
| Adderall et al to be essentially harmless.
|
| There is no conclusive research on humans, but you have
| these backwards. Ritalin (methylphenidate) is thought to
| have less risk for neurotoxicity than Adderall
| (amphetamine). Amphetamine enters the neuron and disrupts
| some internal functions as part of its mechanism of action,
| while Ritalin does not.
|
| Both drugs will induce tolerance, though. The early
| motivation-enhancing effects don't last very long.
|
| There are also some entertaining studies where researchers
| give one group of students placebo and another group of
| students Adderall, then have them self-rate their
| performance. The Adderall group rates themselves as having
| done much better, despite performing the same on the test.
| If you've ever seen the confidence boost that comes from
| people taking their first stimulant doses, this won't come
| as a big surprise. These early effects (euphoria, excess
| energy) dissipate with long-term treatment, but it fools a
| lot of early users and students who borrow a couple pills
| from a friend.
| lumost wrote:
| I went to university at a time that Adderall was
| commonplace, and am now old enough to see how it turned out
| for the individuals. At college, it was common for students
| to illicitly purchase Adderall to use as a stimulate to
| cram for a test/paper etc. It was likewise common for
| students to abuse these drugs by taking pills at a faster
| than prescribed pace to work for 48 hours straight amongst
| other habits.
|
| In the workplace, I saw the same folks struggle to work
| consistently without abusive dosages of such drugs. A close
| friend eventually went into in-patient care for psychosis
| due to his interaction with Adderall.
|
| Like any drug, the effect wears off - Cognitive Behavioral
| Therapy matches prescription drugs at treating ADHD after 5
| years. As I recall, the standard dosages of Adderall cease
| to be effective after 7-10 years due to changes in
| tolerance. Individuals trying to maintain the same
| therapeutic effect will either escalate their usage beyond
| "safe" levels or revert to their unmedicated habits.
| atomicthumbs wrote:
| The person you're replying to asked for a source, not an
| anecdote.
| piperswe wrote:
| In my experience, Adderall does lose effectiveness but
| Vyvanse is much hardier. I've been receiving treatment
| for ADHD for about 4 years. My current Vyvanse dose is
| marginally higher than my original Adderall dose, but I'm
| considering reducing it down to below my original
| Adderall dose.
|
| Cognitive behavioral therapy does excel at treating ADHD!
| But 5 years of therapy is what, 16 times more expensive
| than 5 years of medication? Maybe more? Not to mention
| the time commitment.
| antinomicus wrote:
| But adderall and vyvanse aren't the same drug at all. You
| cannot directly compare dosages. 50mg of vyvanse is
| roughly equivalent to 20mg of adderall. As a prodrug,
| Vyvanse must be processed by the liver for it to
| function.
| MagicMoonlight wrote:
| Lmao, imagine saying this kind of slop to someone with
| diabetes.
|
| "Cognitive behavioral therapy matches insulin after 5
| years"
|
| (because they die - so they're no longer counted)
| m_w_ wrote:
| > Presumably, these drugs are (ridiculously tightly)
| controlled to prevent society-wide harm.
|
| Maybe I'm misunderstanding what you mean - but I think
| almost any college student would disagree with this
| presumption.
|
| > Do you have a source for the benefits giving way to
| problems long-term?
|
| Although a very long read, I found this to be very
| insightful:
|
| > It was still true that after 14 months of treatment, the
| children taking Ritalin behaved better than those in the
| other groups. But by 36 months, that advantage had faded
| completely, and children in every group, including the
| comparison group, displayed exactly the same level of
| symptoms.
|
| https://archive.is/20250413091646/https://www.nytimes.com/2
| 0...
| dathinab wrote:
| there is so much wrong with the first few paragraphs of this
| article
|
| 1. some of the things they list as "disabilities" are
| sicknesses which _can_ be disabling but not per see
| disabilities
|
| 2. all of the things listed aren't one/off but have not just
| huge gradients, but huge variations. You might be afflicted
| in a way which "disables" you from living a normal live or
| job but still might be able to handle university due to how
| it differs.
|
| 3. non of the things list is per-see/directly reducing your
| ability to have deep understanding in a specialized field.
| ADHD sometimes comes with hyper focus, which if it manifest
| in the right way can help you in university. It's also might
| make more "traditionally structured jobs" hardly possible for
| you and bad luck with how professors handle their courses is
| more likely to screw you over. Anxiety is often enough more
| topic specific, e.g. social anxiety. This means it can be
| disabling for many normal jobs but not affect you in
| universities which don't require you physical presence, but
| if they do you basically wait out the course and then learn
| after being back home. In rare cases it can also help with
| crunch learning before an exam. Etc. etc.
|
| Actually if we go a step future all of the named health
| issues can make it more likely for you to end up in high
| standard universities. Hyper focus on specific topics from
| ADHD might have started your journey into science even as a
| child. Anxiety might have lead to you studying more. Since
| might have been an escape from a painful reality which later
| lead to you developing depression.
|
| If we consider how high standard universities can cause a lot
| of stress which can cause an out brake of anxiety or
| depression in some people it just is another data point why
| we would expect higher number of health issues (if you lump a
| bunch of very different issues together like they do).
|
| Later they then also throw in autism in the list of mental
| issues, even through autism always had been higher
| represented in academia due to how it sometimes comes with
| "special interests" and make socializing as a child harder,
| i.e. it can lead to a child very early and very long term
| focusing on scientific topics out of their fully own
| interest. (But it doesn't have to, it can also thoroughly
| destroy you live to a point "learning to cope with it" isn't
| possible anymore and you are basically crippled as long as
| you don't luck out massively with your job and environment.)
|
| Honestly the whole article has a undertone of people with
| "autism, ADHD, anxiety, depression" shouldn't be "elite"
| university and any accommodations for them should be cut.
|
| Now to be fair accommodations have to be reasonable and you
| have to learn to cope with your issues. Idk. how they are
| handled in the US, but from what I have seen in the EU that
| is normally the case. E.g. with dyslexia and subtle nerve
| damage making hand writing harder I could have gotten a
| slight time extensions for any non-multiple choice exams. I
| didn't bother because it didn't matter all (but one) exams
| where done in a way where if you know the topic well you can
| finish in 60-70% of the time and if you don't even 3x time
| would not help you much (and the extension was like flat
| 15min). That is except if my nerve damage or dyslexia where
| worse then I really would have needed the time, not for
| solving questions but for writing down answers. There was one
| exam which tested more if you had crammed in all knowledge
| then testing understanding, in that exam due to dyslexia and
| my hands not being able to write quite as fast as normal I
| actually last some points, not because I didn't know but
| because I wasn't able to write fast enough.
|
| The point here is if done well people which don't need
| accommodations shouldn't have a huge benefits even if they
| get them, but people needing it not getting it can mean
| punishing them for thing unrelated to actual skills. Live
| will do so enough after university, no need to force it into
| universities which should focus on excellence of knowledge
| and understanding.
| BobaFloutist wrote:
| >ADHD sometimes comes with hyper focus, which if it
| manifest in the right way can help you in university.
|
| "Hyperfocus" is a clinical term for focus that is excessive
| enough to be an impairment. People often conflate it with
| the term "Special interest" used for Autism, but it's
| completely different, it refers to the inability to pull
| focus away from something despite wanting and needing to.
| It is, definitionally, without benefit. If there's a
| benefit, it's not hyperfocus.
|
| Which makes sense, if you think about it. ADHD is
| characterized by poor ability to direct attention. People
| know about it causing a lack of attention to things that
| need attention, but it can also cause attention to things
| that don't need it.
| newsclues wrote:
| Follow the incentives
| Aurornis wrote:
| 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 accommodation request is extra time on tests. At
| many high schools and universities, getting more time than your
| peers to take tests is as simple as finding a doctor who will
| write the write things in a note for you. Some universities
| grant special permissions to record lectures to students with
| disabilities, too.
|
| If you don't have a disability, you aren't allowed to record
| lectures and you have to put your pencil down at the end of the
| normal test window. As you can imagine, when a high percentage
| of the student body gets to stay longer for a hard test, the
| wheels start turning in students' heads as they realize
| cheating is being normalized and they're being left behind by
| not getting that doctors' note.
|
| The rampant abuse is really becoming a problem for students
| with true disabilities. As you can imagine, when the disability
| system is faced with 1/3 of the student body registering for
| disability status the limited number of single rooms and other
| resources will inevitably get assigned to people who don't need
| it while some who actually do need it are forced to go without.
| jaredklewis wrote:
| Can someone explain to me why the accommodations make sense
| in the first place?
|
| Like what's the point of having the test be time constrained?
| If there is no point, then just let everyone have more time.
| If there is a point to having the test be time constrained,
| then aren't we just holding one group to a lower standard
| than another group? Why is that good?
|
| Same question about lectures. Is there a reason everyone
| can't record the lectures? If so, then why do we have
| different standards?
|
| I think at the college level, grades should in some sense
| reflect your proficiency at a given topic. An "A" in calculus
| should mean that you can do calculus and that evaluation
| should be independent of your own strengths, weaknesses,
| disabilities, genetic predisposition to it, and so on.
| Imagine an extreme example: someone is in a car crash,
| suffers brain damage, and is now unable to do calculus. This
| is tragic. But I don't also feel that it now makes sense to
| let them do their tests open book or whatever to accommodate
| for that. As a society we should do whatever we can to
| support this individual and help them live their best life.
| But I don't see how holding them to a lower standard on their
| college exams accomplishes that.
| wisty wrote:
| Lots of people think a test should measure one thing (often
| under the slightly "main character" assumption that they'll
| be really good at the one truly important thing).
|
| Tests usually measure lots of things, and speed and
| accuracy / fluency in the topic is one.
|
| It certainly shouldn't be entirely a race either though.
|
| Also if a test is time constrained it's easier to mark.
| Give a failing student 8 hours and they'll write 30 pages
| of nonsense.
| jaredklewis wrote:
| > Also if a test is time constrained it's easier to mark.
| Give a failing student 8 hours and they'll write 30 pages
| of nonsense.
|
| Sure that makes sense to me, but I don't see why this
| would not also apply to ADHD students or any other group.
|
| And of course, there needs to be some time limit. All I
| am saying is, instead of having a group that gets one
| hour and another group that gets two hours, just give
| everyone two hours.
|
| I meant "constrained" not in the sense of having a limit
| at all, but in the sense that often tests are designed in
| such a way that it is very common that takers are unable
| to finish in the allotted time. If this constraint serves
| some purpose (i.e. speed is considered to be desirable)
| then I don't see why that purpose doesn't apply to
| everyone.
| wisty wrote:
| 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 the test is not overly time
| focused, but it's still an advantage, and a lot of these
| students / parents will go for every advantage they can.
| jaredklewis wrote:
| If speed is determined to be important and made one of
| the evaluation criteria, it's important whether or not
| you have clinical anxiety.
|
| If speed is not important, why are we evaluating it at
| all?
| darth_avocado wrote:
| Well that's the core of the problem. Either you're
| measuring speed on a test or you're not. If you are, then
| people with disabilities unfortunately do not pass the
| test and that's the way it is. If you are not, then
| testing some students but not others is unfair.
|
| At the end of the day setting up a system where different
| students have different criteria for succeeding,
| automatically incentivizes students to find the easiest
| criteria for themselves.
| bawolff wrote:
| > Tests usually measure lots of things, and speed and
| accuracy / fluency in the topic is one.
|
| Why are you trying to measure speed though?
|
| I can't think of any situation where someone was like:
| you have exactly 1 minute to integrate this function, or
| else.
|
| Fluency yes, but speed is a poor proxy for fluency.
| schnable wrote:
| Why is it a poor proxy? Someone who really understands
| the concepts and has the aptitude for it will get answers
| more quickly than someone who is shakier on it. The
| person who groks it less may be able to get to the
| answer, but needs to spend more time working through the
| problem. They're less good at calculus and should get a
| lower grade! Maybe they shouldn't fail Calc 101, but may
| deserve a B or (the horror) a C. Maybe that person will
| never get an A is calculus and that should be ok.
|
| Joel Spolsky explained this well about what makes a good
| programmer[1]. "If the basic concepts aren't so easy that
| you don't even have to think about them, you're not going
| to get the big concepts."
|
| [1] https://www.joelonsoftware.com/2006/10/25/the-
| guerrilla-guid...
| LargeWu wrote:
| My middle school aged child was recently diagnosed with
| learning disorders around processing, specifically with
| written language and math, which means even though he
| might know the material well it will take him a long time
| to do things we take for granted like reading and
| writing. But, he does much much better with recall and
| speed when transmitting and testing his knowledge orally.
| He's awful with spelling and phonemes, but his vocabulary
| is above grade level. For kids like him, the time aspect
| is not necessarily correlated to subject mastery.
| TeMPOraL wrote:
| Eliminating time limits on standardized tests is
| infeasible; it would require changes to processes on a
| state or national levels, and mindsets in education as a
| whole. It's also a complex enough issue that you'd have
| factions arguing for and against it six ways to Sunday.
| It's not going to happen.
|
| In contrast, special-casing few disadvantaged students is a
| _local_ decisions every school or university could make
| independently, and initially it was an easy sell - a tiny
| exception to help a fraction of people whom life treated
| particularly hard. Nobody _intended_ for that to eventually
| apply to 1 /3 of all students - but this is just the usual
| case of a dynamic system adjusting to compensate.
| jaredklewis wrote:
| You say it is infeasible for standardized tests, but why?
| Is it that much harder to give 50 students and extra hour
| than to give 5 students an extra hour? Or just design the
| tests so that there is ample time to complete them
| without extra time.
|
| But putting aside standardized tests, in the context of
| this discussion about Stanford, I think these
| accommodations are being used for ordinary tests given
| for classes, so Stanford (or any other school) has full
| control to do whatever they want.
| jameshart wrote:
| Eliminating time constraints is entirely reasonable.
| Leaving exams early is generally an option in most
| standardized testing systems - though usually with some
| minimum time you must remain present before leaving.
|
| Taking what is currently scheduled as a three hour exam
| which many students already leave after 2, and for which
| some have accommodations allowing them 4 hours, and just
| setting aside up to five hours for it for everyone,
| likely makes the exam a fairer test of knowledge (as
| opposed to a test of exam skills and pressured time
| management) for _everyone_.
|
| Once you've answered all the problems, or completed an
| essay, additional time isn't going to make your answers
| any better. So you can just get up and leave when you're
| _done_.
| bradlys wrote:
| The reason is because employers are insanely brutal in the
| job market due to an oversupply of qualified talent. We
| have more people than we have positions available to work
| for quality wages. This is why everything is so extreme.
| Students need to be in the top X percent in order to get a
| job that leads to a decent quality of life in the US. The
| problem is that every student knows this and is now
| competing against one another for these advantages.
|
| It's like stack ranking within companies that always fire
| the bottom 20%. Everyone will do whatever they can to be in
| the top 80% and it continues to get worse every year. Job
| conditions are not improving every year - they are
| continually getting worse and that's due to the issue that
| we just don't have enough jobs.
|
| This country doesn't build anything anymore and we are
| concentrating all the wealth and power into the hands of a
| few. This leaves the top 1% getting richer every year and
| the bottom 99% fighting over a smaller piece of the pie
| every year.
| jaredklewis wrote:
| Your comment explains why students would like to receive
| these accommodations (it gives them a competitive edge),
| but does nothing to explain why this is logical or
| beneficial.
|
| If as you say the number of available positions is
| constrained, this system does nothing to increase the
| supply of those positions. It also does nothing increase
| the likelihood that those positions are allocated to
| those with the greatest material need. This is Stanford;
| I am sure many of the disabled students at Stanford are
| in the 1%.
| bradlys wrote:
| Even in the top 1% there's a limited amount of positions.
| Everyone wants every advantage possible over everyone
| else. That is how the market is. Even for Stanford
| students there is a hierarchy.
| jaredklewis wrote:
| Yes, I agree with that, but that still doesn't explain
| why it would be a good idea to give some students more
| time on a test. It explains why students would be
| incentivized to game the system and get more time. But it
| doesn't explain why we have this strange system to begin
| with.
| bawolff wrote:
| > An "A" in calculus should mean that you can do calculus
| and that evaluation should be independent of your own
| strengths
|
| If you can't do calculus, extra time is not going to help
| you. Its not like an extra 30 minutes in a closed room
| environment is going to let you rederrive calculus from
| first principles.
|
| The theory behind these accomedations is that certain
| people are disadvantaged in ways that have nothing to do
| with the thing being evaluated.
|
| The least controversial version would be someone that is
| blind gets a braile version of the test (or someone to read
| it to them, etc). Sure you can say that without the
| accomadations the blind student cannot do calculus like the
| other students can, but you are really just testing if they
| can see the question not if they "know" calculus. The point
| of the test is to test their ability at calculus not to
| test if their eyes work.
| jaredklewis wrote:
| The braille example you give makes absolutely perfect
| sense. The blind student is being evaluated same as the
| other students and the accommodation given to the blind
| student (a Braille version of the test) would be of no
| use to the other students.
|
| But extra test time is fundamentally different, as it
| would be of value to anyone taking the test.
|
| If getting the problems in Braille helps the student
| demonstrate their ability to do Calculus, we give them
| the test in Braille. If getting 30 minutes of extra time
| helps all students demonstrate their ability to do
| calculus, why don't we just give it to all students then?
| skeeter2020 wrote:
| >> Like what's the point of having the test be time
| constrained?
|
| A few examples: competitive tests based on adapting the
| questions to see how "deep" an individual can get within a
| specific time. IRL there are lots of tasks that need to be
| done well and quickly; a correct plodder isn't acceptable.
| jaredklewis wrote:
| That makes sense to me, but in that case I also just
| don't understand why one group gets more time than
| another group. If the test is meant to evaluate speed,
| then you can't give some groups more time, because now it
| doesn't evaluate speed anymore.
| munchbunny wrote:
| Some fairly simple examples where accommodations make the
| test more fair:
|
| * You have a disability that hinders your ability to type
| on a keyboard, so you need extra time to type the essay
| based exam through vocal transcription.
|
| * You broke your dominant hand (accidents happen) so even
| though you know all of the material, you just can't write
| fast enough within normal "reasonable" time limits.
|
| * You are blind, you need some way to be able to read the
| questions in the test. People who can see normally
| shouldn't need those accommodations.
|
| I don't think those are cases where you are lowering the
| bar. Not by more than you are allowing the test taker a
| fairer chance, anyway.
|
| The problem is when you get into the gray area where it's
| not clear than an accommodation should be given.
| viccis wrote:
| >Another big accommodation request is extra time on tests.
|
| Yep. Speaking from experience, top colleges will give
| students with ADHD or similar conditions as much as double
| time or more on exams. One college I know of sends them to a
| disability services office to proctor it, in which they
| simply don't enforce time limits at all.
|
| Coincidentally, there's an overwhelming number of students
| with ADHD compared to before these kinds of accommodations
| became standard.
| vasilipupkin wrote:
| the original article is factually incorrect. Accommodations
| at Stanford are only 25% of students, according to their
| website, and that includes every possible kind of
| accommodation, not just time and half on tests. If you had
| carpet replaced in your dorm because it gave you an allergy,
| it would be included. So, this is just an article that is
| just flat out bullshit.
| EA-3167 wrote:
| The bullshit nature of the article becomes clear as the
| author repeatedly begs the question as the sole means of
| making her actual argument.
|
| Edit: To be clear there's a lot of argument from
| incredulity or "obviously something is wrong," without
| doing the work to establish that.
| Aurornis wrote:
| > the original article is factually incorrect.
| Accommodations at Stanford are only 25% of students,
| according to their website, and that includes every
| possible kind of accommodation,
|
| The original article said 38% students are registered with
| the disability office, not that 38% of students have
| accommodations.
|
| Not all students registered with the disability office
| receive accommodations all of the time.
|
| 25% is still a very, very high number. The number of public
| universities is in the 3-4% range. From the article:
|
| > According to Weis's research, only 3 to 4 percent of
| students at public two-year colleges receive
| accommodations, a proportion that has stayed relatively
| stable over the past 10 to 15 years.
| vasilipupkin wrote:
| yes, the original article is a flat out bullshit lie
|
| https://oae.stanford.edu/students/dispelling-myths-about-
| oae
|
| it's 25% registered, not 38%. How do you get this number
| wrong when Stanford has it on their website? how does
| that even happen?
|
| this number includes literally every type of possible
| accommodation. A shitty carpet in your room is included,
| an accommodation for a peanut allergy is included. This
| is a 90 plus a year private school, I think it's fine
| that you can get a shitty carpet replaced in a way maybe
| you couldn't at University of Akron ? what's the problem?
| it's a nothingnburger.
|
| the point is the article is somehow implying that 38% of
| students get some weird special treatment but that just
| is not the case
| Aurornis wrote:
| Your link doesn't say "25%". It's also not an official,
| up-to-date statistics resource. It's website copy for the
| office of accessible education
|
| The "1 in 4" number has been there as far back as Wayback
| Machine has that paged archived (2023): http://web.archiv
| e.org/web/20230628165315/https://oae.stanfo...
|
| So it's definitely not a precise statistic, and it's
| likely out of date.
| vasilipupkin wrote:
| 1 in 4 is 25%
|
| it's on their website. Along with all the other details.
| where is 38% coming from that is a better source than
| Stanford's own website. At a minumum the article should
| have said where they got that number and why it disagrees
| with Stanford's own number.
|
| And again, it includes every possible kind of
| accommodation under the sun. Which is totally fine and
| not an issue of any kind.
| Aloisius wrote:
| The Atlantic journalist talked to Stanford Professor Paul
| Graham Fisher who was co-chair of the university's
| disability task force, so I imagine they either got it
| from him or someone else at the school.
|
| They could have made it up, but since the article is a
| couple days old and no one has printed any retraction or
| correction, I'm more inclined to believe the number is
| accurate.
| vasilipupkin wrote:
| The number isn't sourced. But the article does say 24%
| were receiving academic OR housing accommodation. So 38%
| registered disabled but only 24% receiving any type of
| accommodations sounds suspiciously like bullshit. It
| would require people registering and not using the thing
| they registered for.
|
| But most importantly, the OR plays a big role here. Where
| is the data on how many people are using academic
| accommodations ? Complaining that people at a 90k a year
| school receive a housing accommodation is just frankly
| absurd. The article heavily implies that people are
| somehow using these accommodations to gain an academic
| advantage, when in fact 24% of people use any kind of
| accommodation, which includes dirty carpet replacement.
| Aurornis wrote:
| > 1 in 4 is 25%
|
| N in M fractions are used in casual copy to convey an
| approximate value. Finding a "1 in 4" number on a dated
| website does not mean that the current number is
| literally 25%.
|
| It's an approximation and not meant to be taken as a
| precise value. They're not going to update the website to
| "26 out of 100" if the number changes.
|
| Citing an old, approximate number in some non-specific
| website copy does not invalidate anything.
| vasilipupkin wrote:
| You are nitpicking. By that logic, since we can never
| know the precise number because that number is always
| moving, we simply don't know what the number is and all
| this is moot.
| adolph wrote:
| > The number of public universities is in the 3-4% range.
|
| The National Center for Education Statistics disagrees
| with 3-4%. In 2019-20, some 21 percent of
| undergraduates and 11 percent of postbaccalaureate
| students reported having a disability. . .
|
| https://nces.ed.gov/fastfacts/display.asp?id=60
| Aurornis wrote:
| That's a different statistic. Not all students who report
| having a disability on a survey will be registered with
| their school's disability office.
| BobaFloutist wrote:
| A public two-year college? So, a community college?
| That's a much more specific claim than that being the
| case for public universities overall.
| Phithagoras wrote:
| 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 slightly less competitive
| university.
|
| Rising disability rates are not limited to the Ivy League.
|
| A close friend of mine is faculty at a medium sized
| university and specializes in disability accommodations. She
| is also deaf. Despite being very bright and articulate, she
| had a tough time in university, especially lecture-heavy
| undergrad. In my eyes, most of the students she deals with
| are "young and disorganized" rather than crippled. Their
| experience of university is wildly different from hers. Being
| diagnosed doesn't immediately mean you should be
| accommodated.
|
| The majority of student cases receive extra time on exams
| and/or attendance exemptions. But the sheer volume of these
| cases take away a lot of badly needed time and funding for
| students who are talented, but are also blind or wheelchair
| bound. Accommodating this can require many months of planning
| to arrange appropriate lab materials, electronic equipment,
| or textbooks.
|
| As the article mentions, a deeply distorted idea of normal is
| being advanced by the DSM (changing ADHD criteria) as well as
| social media (enjoying doodling, wearing headphones a lot,
| putting water on the toothbrush before toothpaste. These and
| many other everyday things are suggested signs of
| ADHD/autism/OCD/whatever). This is a huge problem of its own.
| Though it is closely related to over-prescribing education
| accommodations, it is still distinct.
|
| Unfortunately, psychological-education assessments are not
| particularly sensitive. They aren't good at catching
| pretenders and cannot distinguish between a 19 year old who
| genuinely cannot develop time management skills despite years
| of effort & support, and one who is still developing them
| fully. Especially after moving out and moving to a new area
| with new (sub)cultures.
|
| Occasionally, she sees documents saying "achievement is
| consistent with intelligence", a polite way of saying that a
| student isn't very smart, and poor grades are not related to
| any recognized learning disability. Really and truly, not
| everyone needs to get an undergrad degree.
| jareds wrote:
| Why are frequent attendance exemptions granted? I'm totally
| blind and when I went to college my lack of attendance had
| nothing to do with the fact that I was blind and everything
| to do with the fact that I made poor choices like other
| college students. If I didn't have the mobility skills to
| get to class then I shouldn't have been granted an
| exception, I should have been told to get better mobility
| skills before going to college. I think the only time I
| asked for an attendance exemption was during finals week.
| There was a blizzard at the same time as one of my finals
| and the sidewalks and streets were not plowed. This made it
| incredibly dangerous for me to go to take the test. I just
| emailed explaining the situation and took the test the next
| day.
| mmmlinux wrote:
| Water before toothpaste = adhd now?
| TeMPOraL wrote:
| Isn't this how you're supposed to be doing it anyway?
| Lammy wrote:
| ADHD is when high school chemistry class covers
| emulsifiers and you remember it
| lazide wrote:
| But can't remember if you ate today or not.
| psunavy03 wrote:
| Sort of like having any kind of strong interest in any
| kind of niche topic apparently now magically teleports
| you onto the autism spectrum. No, that's not how that
| works . . .
| Aurornis wrote:
| > 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 request letters to anyone who makes an
| appointment and asks nicely.
|
| 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.
|
| Once it becomes widely known that getting a diagnosis is
| the meta-game to getting housing priority, nicer rooms,
| extra time on tests, and other benefits the numbers climb
| rapidly. When the number is approaching 38%, the system has
| become broken.
|
| It's a real problem for the students who really need these
| accommodations. When 38% of the students qualify for
| "priority" housing, you're still in competition with 1/3 of
| the student body for those limited resources.
| bawolff wrote:
| > Another big accommodation request is extra time on tests.
|
| Maybe the real problem is we are testing people on how fast
| they can do something not if they can do something.
|
| In general, being good at academics require you to think
| carefully not quickly. I suspect there is a correlation
| between people who think things through and people who do
| well in school.
| jbullock35 wrote:
| > In general, being good at academics require you to think
| carefully not quickly.
|
| Yes, but to go even further: timed tests often test, in
| part, your ability to handwrite quickly rather than slowly.
| There is great variation in handwriting speed -- I saw it
| as a student and as a professor -- and in classrooms, we
| should no more be testing students for handwriting speed
| than we should be testing them on athletic ability.
|
| In general, timed tests that involve a lot of handwriting
| are appalling. We use them because they make classroom
| management easier, not because they are justifiable
| pedagogy.
| AlexandrB wrote:
| This is true about other things like reading speed as
| well. It still doesn't mean that time limits are useless.
| These are skills you can develop up to a reasonable level
| through practice if they're lacking, not something fixed
| like height. And if it takes you 12 hours to get through
| a 2 hour test because of these factors it's a sign that
| you're not going to be a very effective
| employee/researcher. Being able to read/write with some
| haste is not unrelated to job/academic performance.
| jbullock35 wrote:
| > Being able to read/write with some haste is not
| unrelated to job/academic performance.
|
| Yes, I agree. But my point is about handwriting, rather
| than writing in general. Handwriting speed is something
| that we are effectively testing with many in-class exams.
| And handwriting speed - unlike reading or writing speed -
| is indeed unrelated to job performance. It is also
| unrelated to any reasonable measure of academic
| performance.
| neltnerb wrote:
| It is an interesting point about handwriting as distinct
| from reading or writing alone. I appreciate it, thank
| you.
|
| I would not concede that speed is not as important as
| doing it correctly in the context of evaluating learning.
| There are homework, projects, and papers where there is a
| lot of time available to probe whether they can think it
| through and do it correctly with no time limit. It's
| ideal if everyone can finish an exam, but there needs to
| be some kind of pressure for people to learn to quickly
| identify a kind of problem, identify the correct solution
| approach, and actually carry out the solution.
|
| But they shouldn't be getting penalized for not doing a
| page of handwritten linear algebra correctly, I totally
| agree that you need to make sure you're testing what you
| think you're testing.
| sizzle wrote:
| Meanwhile my uni required brain scans for adhd accommodations
| it was asinine
| Aurornis wrote:
| Imaging (brain scans) cannot be used for ADHD diagnosis.
| There is no standard for it. There were a couple quack
| doctors who pushed the idea (Dr. Amen is the famous one)
| but it's not an accepted medical practice.
|
| I think someone misunderstood, or they were telling you a
| lie.
| eek2121 wrote:
| If your rant is about the USA: Are we really going to try to
| turn this into a war against the ADA?
|
| I counter: If students are requesting specific accommodations
| en-mass, maybe schools should rethink overall decisions.
| Maybe housing shouldn't be shared. Maybe the workload should
| be relaxed.
|
| Disabilities are far more commonplace than you might imagine.
| The number of disabled people per 1,000 likely hasn't
| changed, but our recognition of disabilities such as autism,
| anxiety disorders, etc. has gotten better.
|
| I'm sure a very small amount of folks do abuse the system,
| but I'd bet money that most actually have disabilities.
|
| If you still think otherwise, think again: I was diagnosed
| with ADHD in my mid 30s, and with autism in my mid 40s. This
| is through extended, multiple hour testing. Nobody told me I
| had these issues. I was simply told I was a terrible person
| that didn't do his school work and behaved poorly at school.
| Now, with an understanding of autism, ADHD, and the new
| anxiety disorder I have thanks to a recent brain injury, I'm
| able to finally address this stuff.
|
| I also aced higher level, computer centric stuff, and set a
| record for one of the quickest to graduate in my state at a
| technical school (2 months instead of 2 years).
|
| Bottom line is that you should not be making poor assumptions
| about people abusing the system without evidence to prove it.
| godelski wrote:
| Not at Stanford, but recent (PhD) graduate and I think you're
| pretty spot on, but also missing some things.
|
| The definition of disability is pretty wide. I have an
| emotional support animal but if it wasn't for the housing
| requirement I probably wouldn't have declared anything. I do
| have diagnosed depression[0] and ADHD. I tend to not be open
| about these unless it is relevant to the conversation and I
| don't really put it down in job applications or other
| questionnaires. But being more socially acceptable I also
| believe more people are getting diagnosed _AND_ more people are
| putting an accurate mark on those questionnaires. I can
| absolutely tell you many people lie on these and I 'd bet there
| are * _far_ * more false negatives than false positives. Social
| stigma should suggest that direction of bias...
|
| I say this because I really dislike Reason[1]. There's an
| element of truth in there, but they are also biased and using
| that truth to paint an inaccurate narrative. Reason says I've
| made this part of my identity, but that couldn't be further
| from the truth. What they're aware of and using to pervert the
| narrative is that our measurements have changed. That's a whole
| other conversation than what they said and they get to sidestep
| several more important questions.
|
| [rant]
|
| Also, people are getting diagnosed more! I can't tell you why
| everyone has a diagnosis these days, but I can say why I got my
| ADHD diagnosis at the age of 30 (depression was made pretty
| young). For one, social stigma has changed. I used to
| completely hide my depression and ADHD. Now that it is more
| acceptable I will openly discuss it when the time is right, but
| it's not like I'm proud of my depression or ADHD. But there is
| also the fact that the world has changed and what used to be
| more manageable became not. Getting treated changed my life for
| the better, but the modern world and how things are going have
| changed things for the worse. Doing a PhD is no joke[2], doing
| it in a pandemic is crazy, doing it in a ML boom (and
| researching ML) is harder, and doing it with an adversarial
| advisor is even worse. On top of that the world is just getting
| more difficult to navigate for me. Everything is trying to grab
| my attention and I have to be far more defensive about it.
| Instead of being in an office where I can signal "work mode"
| and "open to talk mode" with a door I get pings on slack by
| people who want to be synchronous with an asynchronous
| communication platform, messaging "hey"[3] and nothing else. A
| major issue with ADHD is triage, because everything seems like
| an emergency. If you're constantly pinging me and I can't
| signal that I need to be left alone, then that just drives the
| anxiety up. This is only worsened by the fact that Slack's
| notification system is, at best, insufferable[4]. So I don't
| know about everyone else, but I'm absolutely not surprised that
| other peoples' anxiety is shooting through the roof. We haven't
| even mentioned politics, economics, or many other things I know
| you're all thinking about.
|
| [/rant]
|
| So yeah, there's the housing issue and I do think that's worth
| talking about (it's true for an apartment too[5]). I'd gladly
| pay the pet deposit and extra money per month for a pet. It is
| never an option, so people go "nuclear". _BUT ALSO_ I think we
| should have a different conversation about the world we 're
| actually creating and how it is just making things difficult.
| The world is complicated, no surprise, but our efforts to
| oversimplify things are just making it more complicated. I
| really just wish we'd all get some room to breathe and rethink
| some things. I really wish we could just talk like normal human
| beings and stop fighting, blaming, and pointing fingers as if
| there's some easy to dismiss clear bad guy. There's plenty of
| times where there is, but more often there is no smoking gun. I
| know what an anxiety feedback loop looks like and I really
| don't know why we want the whole world to do this. They fucking
| suck! I don't want to be in one! Do you?
|
| [0] My mom passed away when I was a pre-teen. I think no one is
| surprised nor doubts this diagnosis.
|
| [1] I'm also not a big fan of The Atlantic. Both are highly
| biased
|
| [2] I actually think a PhD _should_ be a great place for ADHD
| people. Or research in general. Many of us get sucked down
| rabbit holes and see things from a different point of view.
| These can be major advantages in research and science. But
| these are major hurdles when the academic framework is to
| publish or perish. There 's no ability to get depth or chase
| rabbit holes. I was always compared to peers who published 50
| papers in a year as if that is a good thing. (Yeah, the dude
| did a lot of work and he should be proud, but those papers are
| obviously shallow. He should be proud, but we also need nuance
| in how we evaluate. https://youtube.com/shorts/rDk_LsON3CM)
|
| [3] https://youtu.be/OF_5EKNX0Eg?t=8
|
| [4] Thanks, I really needed that phone notification to a
| message I responded to an hour ago. Thanks, I really needed
| that notification to a muted channel. Thanks, I really needed
| that notification to a random thread I wasn't mentioned in and
| have never sent a single message in. Thanks, I'm glad I didn't
| get a notification to that @godelski in #general or #that-
| channel-I-admin. Does slack even care about what my settings
| say?
|
| [5] My hypothesis is that the no pet clauses are put in because
| people use templates. And justified because one bad experience
| gets shared and sits in peoples heads stronger than the extra
| money in their pockets.
| skeeter2020 wrote:
| >> I'd gladly pay the pet deposit and extra money per month
| for a pet
|
| Maybe, but my single data point: I'm on the board for a condo
| corporation and even though we spend a lot of time dealing
| with pet policies and the damage pets (read: dogs) cause, we
| have a total of ZERO pets registered (and paying the monthly
| fee), and these are overwhelmingly owners not renters who
| might be excluded from having pets to begin with.
| jareds wrote:
| I didn't realize that using disability accommodations to get a
| single was so common. I used the fact that I was blind to get a
| single in the early 2000's. It may not have been strictly
| necessary, but I justified it by the fact I had an incredibly
| loud braille printer that took up a bunch of space. I didn't
| try to stack accommodations though, since I could walk as well
| as anyone else I didn't get preferential treatment when it came
| to location.
| dathinab wrote:
| What I don't understand (but also wouldn't be surprised about
| if it is misrepresented by the article) is:
|
| - why would you get a single, for ADHD, non-social-related
| anxiety, non-sever autism or depression (especially in the
| later case you probably shouldn't be in a single)
|
| - I mean sure social anxiety, sever autism can be good
| reasons for a single.
|
| through in general the whole US dorms thing is strange to me
| (in the EU there are dorms, but optional (in general). And
| 50%+ of studentsfind housing outside of it (but depends on
| location). This allows for a lot more individualized living
| choices.)
| rayiner wrote:
| Seems like evidence of profound moral decline that students
| would do that.
| lurking_swe wrote:
| not even moral decline! I'd personally feel like a fraud
| every day if I "made it" by using 5 different unnecessary
| accommodations.
| jimbokun wrote:
| 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.
| jareds wrote:
| 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,
| chemistry, and computer science. I think in some ways it's
| easier having an obvious disability. You can't hide it, and
| the only time people don't believe your blind when using a
| cane is at the bar on Halloween.
| onetimeusename wrote:
| It would be interesting to test that maybe by looking at the
| disability rate before and after the honor code was changed
| recently. If there was an increase in disabilities, it might be
| because other cheating options on exams were limited.
|
| For those wondering, the honor code was changed to make all
| exams proctored because of a number of academic dishonesty
| issues that happened allegedly.
| andrewrn wrote:
| Did anyone else actually enjoy dorm life? I was a freshman some
| years ago, so maybe it's generational, but it was a very fond
| time.
|
| I guess it's probably high variance. My roomate was a great
| dude. I can easily see how it could go the other way.
| lurking_swe wrote:
| i remember being woken up at 3am by him vomiting in the
| middle of the room. In the morning he used my swiffer to
| clean up his vomit. I told him to keep the swiffer .
|
| On the bright side, i met my spouse and we've been together
| for 10+ years so not all bad lol.
| esascammer wrote:
| It is beyond frustrating that people - in general - abuse
| accommodations for those with legitimate disabilities in order
| to bring their pets into places they don't belong.
| p-e-w wrote:
| This is 100% the fault of a society that has continuously
| pushed to expand the meaning of "disability" (and many other
| words) until it no longer resembles anything that a
| reasonable person would associate with the term, while
| aggressively silencing anyone who dared to speak out against
| that concept creep.
| smegma2 wrote:
| Yes, but people who lie are also at fault
| cyanydeez wrote:
| Is this better or worse than nepo babies, white privilege or
| other normal social status benefits for college?
| raincom wrote:
| 30% of passengers ask for wheelchairs on long distance flights
| from India. That's how the system gets abused for priority
| boarding.
| weehobbes wrote:
| I have a teenager who is at an academically rigorous college prep
| school. He is incredibly bright and one of the best students in
| the school. But he has an accommodation in math for extra time
| because he has a form of dyscalculia which makes him very prone
| to misreading and mixing up in working memory the numbers,
| symbols and other formulas. He understands all the concepts well,
| but his disability results in calculation/mechanical errors
| unless he has the extra time to check his work multiple times for
| these errors. I believe this kind of disability and accommodation
| is legitimate, but I understand why others may disagree. He even
| says he often feels guilty for getting extra time when others
| don't. I am sure there are also people who abuse the system and
| get accommodations when then don't actually need them.
| kgwgk wrote:
| Everyone who runs out of time does actually need extra time!
| weehobbes wrote:
| Agree!
| mhb wrote:
| Why can't everyone get extra time?
| weehobbes wrote:
| That's a much bigger meta question, like what's even the
| point of putting timing constraints on any test?
|
| Logistically, my kid has to go a testing center at the school
| during his free period and/or lunch periods for his extra
| time. I can imagine that if everyone got extra time, it would
| be a logistical nightmare.
|
| But I think the reality is that our educational system had
| just decided that faster is better and that speed is a
| legitimate way to grade and rank students. Which is stupid.
| bigstrat2003 wrote:
| > But I think the reality is that our educational system
| had just decided that faster is better and that speed is a
| legitimate way to grade and rank students. Which is stupid.
|
| That's not stupid. Speed does in fact matter in the real
| world. To illustrate the point, let's consider an extreme
| example: what if it took me an entire year to do something
| that someone else could do in an hour? My results would be
| so slow that nobody would tolerate me as an employee or
| partner. On the other extreme, if someone takes 1h1s
| instead of 1h it's not really a big deal.
|
| I don't think it's unreasonable to draw a line somewhere
| and say "if you can't do it this fast, you haven't learned
| the material adequately". The tricky thing is _where_ to
| draw that line, not whether such a line is ok at all.
| weehobbes wrote:
| Ok, in the extreme case, that's a fair point. Tests can't
| be unlimited in length. But I don't think it's actually
| that tricky to draw the line. If a typical school test is
| 1 hour during class, just give students the option to
| come in at lunch or a free period for an extra period for
| extra time if needed. That seems easy and reasonable
| enough to me.
| nkrisc wrote:
| Because there must be _some_ time limit, particularly for
| an in-person exam which win probably become even more
| common thanks to LLMs and such.
| mhb wrote:
| Yes. It depends on whether the time pressure is an integral
| part of the test. If it isn't then people should get as
| much time as they need. If it is, it's not clear why people
| should get different amounts of time.
| ryuhhnn wrote:
| Why is it so hard to believe that disabled people can be accepted
| into "elite" universities? I think the article author, and many
| of the commenters here, are conflating "normalised behaviours"
| with "intelligence". As a society we have normalised pushing
| students into being able to complete assessments within an
| allotted time frame, even though the time it takes to finish an
| assessment isn't a perfect measure of one's intelligence
| (regardless of whether or not the answers were factually
| correct/incorrect). We have normalised allowing people who are
| "articulate" to take up space in society because we have
| collectively decided that articulate people are more intelligent,
| even though that isn't inherantly true.
|
| I don't doubt that many of those students are faking having a
| disability to game the system in order to benefit themselves, but
| this article and the discussion around it are anything but
| intellectual.
| fsckboy wrote:
| > _Why is it so hard to believe that disabled people can be
| accepted into "elite" universities?_
|
| ?? many people would think there is something wrong with the
| definition of disabled if 38% of the population is disabled:
| more likely to be mislabeled. now, if 38% of the population is
| not disabled, but 38% of elite universities is, that is also
| something of note... is how the headline/article should be
| read.
|
| then, if you live in a society with the ideological divides
| that many western societies show, where one side campaigns by
| advocating more social spending and the other advocates that
| it's being overdone, the suspicion is sure to emerge in some
| quarters that the metrics for disability might be manipulated
| in one political direction or the other. also makes a number
| like 38% interesting.
| ryuhhnn wrote:
| The CDC reports that 1 in 4 Americans are disabled. Sure 38%
| is higher than 25%, but the 38% number is the worst case
| scenario, two of the other universities cited only had 20% of
| students who were disabled, below the CDC number.
|
| > one side campaigns by advocating more social spending
|
| Ironically, having more social spending on 4-year
| universities would actually alleviate this problem if we are
| following the author's logic. If students weren't the ones
| footing the bill for their education, there would be less
| incentive for them to take measures to try and circumvent a
| system that penalizes low-performance (doubly-so because you
| both get a bad grade and you still have to pay back the
| money).
|
| I read the headline/article exactly the way it was supposed
| to be interpreted. I'm also not reading that far into it, the
| byline literally states, "If you get into an elite college,
| you probably don't have a learning disability", which again,
| is simply not true and is ableist. Disabled people are not
| incapable of performing certain tasks, but they are hindered,
| which is why it's called a disability and not an inability.
| paulpauper wrote:
| But this does not explain the recent surge of disabilities. No
| one says disabled people cannot attend elite universities.
| ryuhhnn wrote:
| > No one says disabled people cannot attend elite
| universities
|
| The author spent the byline and first half of the article
| trying to explain that these universities wouldn't accept
| people with disabilities because they're just too elite and
| highly-selective. The recent surge of disabilities is
| actually perfectly explained, even in the article. The
| diagnostic criteria for disabilities has changed over time,
| becoming more "relaxed" as some would put it. If the
| diagnostic criteria expands to include more people, we are
| going to see higher rates of disability.
| dctoedt wrote:
| I'm mostly a law professor these days. When final-exam time rolls
| around (as in, this week), I raise my eyebrows when I'm sent the
| list of students who get 50% extra time. I wouldn't presume to
| judge the propriety of any given student's accommodation. But
| many of the accommodated students seem to have done just fine in
| class discussions during the semester.
|
| FTA: "Unnecessary accommodations are a two-front form of cheating
| --they give you an unjust leg-up on your fellow students, but
| they also allow you to cheat yourself out of genuine intellectual
| growth."
| scratchyone wrote:
| FWIW, consider that some of these students may need the
| accommodation specifically because of the pressure of the final
| exam. Many mental health disabilities will become worse with
| stress. A low stress environment and a high stress final exam
| could trigger entirely different symptoms.
|
| For example, I have OCD (real, diagnosed, not the bs "omg im so
| ocddddd"). I have extra time accommodations because I have to
| spend time dealing with my OCD symptoms. With treatment, they
| tend to fade into the background. They re-emerge only in high
| stress situations. I would seem like a perfectly normal student
| in class, but then clearly start struggling with these symptoms
| if you watched me take an exam. Consider, many other students
| you teach may have these same experiences.
| lisbbb wrote:
| Then they don't belong in the law field or wherever, simple
| as that. My son has OCD pretty bad, and I know there are
| roles he is unsuitable for. One of the things he does is
| confesses about every little thing that happens--he can't
| keep a secret or tell a lie. It's socially debilitating.
| dctoedt wrote:
| > _some of these students may need the accommodation
| specifically because of the pressure of the final exam._
|
| Success as a lawyer often requires the ability to handle a
| certain amount of pressure. Timed exams are one way of
| screening for that ability. But it's by no means a sure-fire
| predictor of success: Legendary trial lawyer Joe Jamail [0]
| flunked his first-year Torts class at UT Austin [1], yet went
| on to become a billionnaire.
|
| [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joe_Jamail
|
| [1] https://abovethelaw.com/2015/12/r-i-p-to-a-billionaire-
| lawye...
| lingrush4 wrote:
| One can only hope these accommodations are not being
| granted to medical students.
| Sparkle-san wrote:
| I don't see how getting 50% extra time on exams is anything
| remotely close to cheating. Almost nothing I do in my day to
| day job comes close to being as time-boxed or arbitrarily
| restrictive as exams were in college.
| loeg wrote:
| Why don't all students get the extra time, then?
| ghc wrote:
| That's a great question, actually. Timing tests appears to
| arbitrarily punish students.
| dctoedt wrote:
| > _Almost nothing I do in my day to day job comes close to
| being as time-boxed or arbitrarily restrictive as exams were
| in college._
|
| An unpleasant fact of law-school faculty life is that, at
| least at my school, I'm required to grade students so that
| the average is between 3.2 (a high B) and 3.4 (a low B-plus).
| Because of the nature of my course [0], a _timed_ final exam
| is about the only realistic way to spread out The Curve.
|
| [0] https://toedtclassnotes.site44.com/Syllabus.html
| next_xibalba wrote:
| Class rank is a primary factor for top law jobs open to new
| law school graduates. MCAT scores play a huge role in med
| school admissions. Etc.
|
| Like it or not, there are life changing impacts to others by
| cheating at this stuff. This is unambiguously cheating.
| lingrush4 wrote:
| What do you do for work?
|
| I'm not aware of many jobs where employers don't care how
| fast the work gets done.
| MangoToupe wrote:
| It actually makes sense that the smartest people in our society
| would be disabled, right?
| ckemere wrote:
| My experience backs up that this is increasing even on the last
| decade. I worry that it's yet another hack that the $8000
| admissions consultants offer to their clients, potentially
| pointing (yet again) to a version of DEI that doesn't mostly
| amplify privilege.
| windows_hater_7 wrote:
| I go to one of those elite universities now, and I get academic
| accommodations. I think some of the increase is truly from
| greater awareness about disabilities among teachers and parents.
| My mom was a teacher, and she was the one who first suspected
| that I had dyslexia. I repeated kindergarten, and I was
| privileged that my parents were able to afford external
| educational psychology testing. Socioeconomic status is a large
| part of my success. Even seemingly small things like the fact
| that my parents could pick me up after school so that I could go
| to tutoring was something that other kids didn't have, because
| their parents were working or didn't have a car.
| internetter wrote:
| Yeah I suspect that people _are_ being over-diagnosed, but I
| also suspect we 're catching dramatically more cases than we
| were previously. An overcorrection if you will.
| powerclue wrote:
| The "left handedness" graph change that occurred once we
| stopped punishing people for being left handed. Same sort of
| thing here. We'll stabilize once we get good at diagnosing it
| and stop stigmatizing it. We're in a period where the graph
| is changing, and that change is disruptive, but it'll level
| out.
| IAmBroom wrote:
| Suspecting is reasonable. So is suspecting it is under-
| diagnosed.
|
| Ranting about how all these diagnoses are fake is not.
|
| Time may revise our opinions of the current state, but with
| the exception of malpracticing professionals, the diagnoses
| are valid for given state of medical health knowledge.
| internetter wrote:
| I don't believe the diagnoses are fake. I didn't rant. I
| said I suspect. In fact I am diagnosed myself and have
| benefited from the diagnosis.
| ibejoeb wrote:
| Sure. We're also changing rubrics and even inventing new
| conditions, and we don't really try to graduate them. On top
| of that, there are perverse incentives. Amphetamine is an
| amazing drug, and since some people get it, those who don't
| find it hard to compete. So, we have to give them a way to
| get it, because the side effect of not doing that is popping
| them with felony drug trafficking charges at the airport. I
| don't blame anyone for playing the game.
| losvedir wrote:
| > _and I get academic accommodations_
|
| What does this mean, exactly?
| kevstev wrote:
| Typically means more time to take tests than the standard
| allotment, but could mean other things- a digital version
| with a screen reader that speaks the questions to you, or
| something else specific to your disability.
| ok123456 wrote:
| Typically: Take tests with no time restrictions. Retake
| tests. Use assistive technologies (e.g., calculators) that
| are usually disallowed.
| Scubabear68 wrote:
| So you are a long way from Kindergarten to an elite university.
| I mention this because it is odd to me that you picked your 4
| to 5 year old self to validate why you are getting
| accommodations in your teens/twenties at a self-described elite
| university.
|
| My own kids have some issues and varying levels of
| accommodations, but those have evolved and lessened over time.
| As you would hope they would! You seem to imply your conditions
| have not really improved and you need same/similar
| accommodations now as you did 15 years ago?
|
| Sorry, I am trying not to be offensive here but I am genuinely
| confused.
| yAak wrote:
| Dyslexia isn't curable. It doesn't magically go away with
| help, techniques, or accommodations --- it just becomes more
| manageable.
|
| He/she probably wouldn't have gotten into an elite university
| without that help through childhood.
| Scubabear68 wrote:
| I am aware, my daughter has Dyslexia.
|
| But this is not a thread about elementary school
| accommodations, it is about university level
| accommodations.
|
| The question is why the author implies he needs the same or
| similar accommodations at 20ish that he did at 5ish.
|
| Or does he?
| ghc wrote:
| > needs the same or similar accommodations
|
| You inferred or assumed that...OP didn't say it. It's
| common sense that accommodations would be different for
| children just learning to read vs. university students.
| 1659447091 wrote:
| The point they made about grade school, to me, points
| more towards early recognition _now_ leads to more kids
| having a shot at top schools.
|
| Not because they have a 'disability' or a particular type
| of accommodation, but because it was caught early enough
| and worked with by people that cared, that now they have
| a model for learning that better suits them. It was never
| an issue with intelligence, only that some of us* run
| into walls because the standard learning lane is pretty
| narrow. Crashing into those walls in grade school is
| likely what kept many people* from going to top colleges
| (or any college) -- but now that it's better understood
| and worked with at an early age we are seeing people show
| up who can do the same correct work, but do it in a way
| that's different.
|
| * Im also dyslexic, but from the days that wasn't a thing
| in my mediocre public school. I was simply a slow reader
| that couldn't spell (or pronounce or "sound out" words)
| or read out loud, but somehow had high scores in other
| language/comprehension test.
| jph00 wrote:
| You incorrectly drew an implication. The authors words
| only actually imply that some accommodations are still
| needed, not that they are the same accommodations.
|
| This conclusion is obvious given that the underlying
| condition is not curable.
| spencer-p wrote:
| I think they mean to refute the article's suggestion that
| tiktok and misinformation are the cause by highlighting that
| they received accommodations at a young age.
|
| >You seem to imply your conditions have not really improved
| and you need same/similar accommodations
|
| They didn't share the nature of their current accommodations.
| tomalbrc wrote:
| What does receiving accommodations at a young age have to
| do with this
| windows_hater_7 wrote:
| No offense taken. My first point was that some of these
| students were legitimately diagnosed with learning
| disabilities long before grades, the SAT, or college
| admissions were even a thought. I also should have been more
| clear that I wasn't diagnosed with dyslexia and ADHD until I
| was around 9, so I went from needing to repeat grades to
| being more successful in school as a result of getting the
| support I needed.
|
| My overall point is that learning disabilities like dyslexia
| have no impact on intelligence, and accommodations just level
| the playing field. I imagine that if I hadn't been diagnosed
| with dyslexia and ADHD, I wouldn't have made it to the same
| school.
|
| But for people who truly need academic accommodations, the
| playing field will never be level, because every aspect of
| school takes them longer. I don't get more time to study for
| exams, and if it takes me twice as long to read and
| comprehend the same chapter of a textbook as someone without
| dyslexia, I have to study twice as long just to get through
| the same content. I think it's fair that I get to take notes
| using "prohibited technology" during lecture when it is
| impossible for me to decode what the lecturer is saying fast
| enough to turn it into handwritten notes.
|
| However, I agree with the article that the percentage of
| students who claim to have disabilities has gotten out of
| control. Almost 60% of the students in the extended exam room
| finish the exam in the standard time anyway. It does make it
| appear as though everyone with accommodations is gaming the
| system.
|
| Having ADHD and dyslexia is not "quirky" or fun. It
| consistently ruins my life. It is not something I make part
| of my identity.
|
| I would do anything to not need accommodations.
| stevenjgarner wrote:
| Not intending to offend, but aren't exceptionally gifted students
| (i.e. outliers) by definition neuro-divergent? Disclaimer: I am
| neuro-divergent, but not exceptionally gifted.
| teknopaul wrote:
| Oh and the fact that in USofA, Big Pharma in cahoots with corrupt
| doctors and a broken police/judicial system let you legal
| amphetamines if you have adhd is, of course, nothing to do with
| this.
| readthenotes1 wrote:
| "Show me the incentive and I'll show you the behavior"
| - Charlie Munger
|
| Better rooms, more time on tests, sympathy, and more....
| bottlepalm wrote:
| Having a mental disability is chic for kids right now. You won't
| find a discord or other online profile of a kid with less than
| three mental disabilities listed. For better or worse, they use
| them to connect with one another, have something in common. It
| doesn't help either that these disabilities are super easy to
| misdiagnose with dishonest patients which means lots of real
| drugs are flowing to children with fake problems.
|
| This is all aside from the fact that these disabilities can be
| used as a way to get all sorts of special treatment. That's just
| icing on the cake. They see each other doing it and say why not
| me as well. It's a feign mental disorder chain reaction that's
| gone critical. Sexuality as well. They like to collect labels
| like Pokemon. Massive social benefit.
| smcg wrote:
| haha yeah im just queer for clout I love being popular
| bottlepalm wrote:
| It doesn't annoy you that people are using your label for
| clout though? With all the adults focusing on LGBTQ+ trans,
| etc.. a label is a way to make yourself standout, and kids
| are desperate to do that. Especially with mental disorders
| and sexuality because takes zero effort to give yourself a
| label, and now you have something to talk about.
| scratchyone wrote:
| yeah there's totally a huge social benefit to being queer
| right now. definitely.
| bottlepalm wrote:
| Are you being sarcastic because in kid social circles there
| 100% is. Play any games on Steam and/or Quest and it's very
| apparent.
| thatfrenchguy wrote:
| > The result is a deeply distorted view of "normal." If ever
| struggling to focus or experiencing boredom is a sign you have
| ADHD > risk-aversion endemic in the striving children of the
| upper middle class
|
| OP has likely never had a kid with ADHD (I get it, they're like
| 24), getting a kid to be ADHD diagnosed is neither fun nor
| something you would do lightly in the US.
|
| Which is also why older millennials would just not get diagnosed
| and just struggle more. Tech is full high functioning people with
| ADHD and autism, it's not surprising you'd see so many students
| at Stanford being the same.
| jph00 wrote:
| 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 highly
| selective school that's by definition going to be picking gifted
| kids over less gifted ones, and from that group will pick those
| that were accommodated appropriately.
|
| (There could also be cheating - I don't know either way. I'm just
| commenting on the premise of the article. One person in it claims
| the kids aren't really disabled because they don't have
| wheelchairs. Hopefully it's fairly obvious that this claim is
| totally illogical. Such an obviously unreasonable claim on a
| website called "Reason" makes me wonder what they are actually
| trying to achieve there.)
| swiftcoder wrote:
| > Such an obviously unreasonable claim on a website called
| "Reason" makes me wonder what they are actually trying to
| achieve there.
|
| Libertarianism, it would seem
| woodruffw wrote:
| > Libertarianism, it would seem
|
| In some peculiar, perverted sense, given that _evaluating_
| claims of disability requires breaching students ' medical
| privacy. You wouldn't normally expect libertarians to so
| _overtly_ be okay with invasions of personal privacy.
| dragonwriter wrote:
| That's probably because _Reason_ 's libertarian goal is not
| to get claims of disability evaluated. The goal is to get
| the government mandate for disability accommodations
| eliminated, which eliminates any benefit of making the
| claims and therefore any reason to evaluate the claims.
| bee_rider wrote:
| I think they are just commenting on the bias of Reason
| magazine (it is a well known libertarian magazine).
| woodruffw wrote:
| I know; I'm pointing out this is manifestly not a
| libertarian worldview. It's part and parcel with Reason
| being ideologically paleoconservative with a libertarian
| dressing.
| beambot wrote:
| Just curious: If non-neurodivergent children are given the same
| accomodations (which are?) do they significantly outperform
| their peers too? For example: it's well known that 1-on-1
| instruction time correlates to better academic outcomes.
|
| (I'm not an educator; I have no idea.)
| mrgoldenbrown wrote:
| Similarly getting extra time on a test sure as heck would
| have improved my scores in many cases.
| solomonb wrote:
| And ADHD meds seem like they would be helpful for
| studying.. How and where do we draw the line who gets and
| needs additional support?
| veilrap wrote:
| 100%, it's one of the irksome things about the education
| system in general - resources are limited. It's a hard
| problem to solve.
| jph00 wrote:
| I don't know about Stanford, but in earlier schooling
| accomodations can include things like being allowed to sit on
| a bouncy chair, or use a fidget toy, or type instead of hand-
| write (physical asynchronous development is a common issue),
| or wear headphones, or take more frequent breaks.
|
| I do think that more flexibility in educational environments
| might be good for most people, yes.
| dyauspitr wrote:
| What is neurodivergent though? If it's a third of people, you
| can probably deem that normal.
| ok_dad wrote:
| It's a way to separate us so that we can fight about it and
| not focus on the important aspect which is to provide
| everyone the help they need and deserve to make a successful
| life for themselves. Some may need more help than others, and
| so the powers that be who want to keep all that profit for
| themselves target those who need more help with dumb articles
| like this one which spread FUD.
| guizadillas wrote:
| You almost lost me in the first half but yeah, that title
| alone shows the intentions of the editorial
| ok_dad wrote:
| I should specify also that I am not saying a medical
| diagnosis is not important, or that there is no such
| thing as ADHD or Autism.
|
| I believe as a society we need to be more flexible in
| every area for every human and also to give individual
| attention to everyone so they can excel. Some people will
| need more help than others, like those with ADHD, and
| some will need much, much more help than others, such as
| those with more extreme sensory issues with Autism who
| may not even be able to go out in public without
| accommodations.
| swiftcoder wrote:
| Current estimates place it around 20% of the population.
| Wouldn't take a whole lot of sampling error in admissions to
| result in 40% of admitted students
| dragonwriter wrote:
| Stanford doesn't try to admit a random sample of the
| population, and its quite posssible the things it does
| select on positively correlate with the conditions at
| issue; it's quite plausible nonsampling error (systemic
| bias) is a bigger issue than sampling error in explaining
| any prevalence difference from the general population here.
| Spivak wrote:
| I think, broadly, this is what neurodivergent people want.
| Nobody considers having poor vision a disability despite it
| nominally being one since it's so well accommodated. And it's
| so well accommodated in part because it affects so many
| people that it's normal.
|
| The world right now doesn't do a great job of "by default"
| accommodating people with the broad class of difficulties
| experienced by people that fall under the umbrella of
| neurodivergence and takes as given that everyone is in the
| 70-80% group. So now it's a disability with doctor's visits
| and paperwork and specific individual accommodations when it
| very well could not be.
| jph00 wrote:
| A third is about as common as astigmatism in >50 year olds
| (like me, for instance!) I wear glasses to accommodate this
| disability, and as a result have nearly no practical problems
| due to it.
|
| I don't think a problem having a high frequency means that we
| should decide it doesn't matter or need rectification.
| rahimnathwani wrote:
| That's true, but astigmatism:
|
| - is clearly defined
|
| - can be measured objectively (with autorefractors,
| keratometers, corneal topographers)
|
| - can be corrected cheaply ($20 glasses) to eliminate any
| disadvantage in performance or efficiency
|
| Neurodivergence:
|
| - is not clearly defined
|
| - cannot be measured objectively, and is diagnosed using
| behavioral observations and cognitive tests
|
| - may rely on 'accommodations' that, in the hands of
| someone without a diagnosis, would be considered cheating
|
| Imagine I don't have astigmatism. If I were to take your
| glasses, would they improve my performance in college?
|
| Imagine my legs are fine. If I were to take someone's
| wheelchair and start using it daily, would that improve my
| performance in college?
|
| Imagine I am neurotypical. If I were to take 2x the time on
| a test, would my performance improve?
| dkarl wrote:
| My current employer had me answer the question of whether I'm
| "disabled." I've never answered "yes" to this question since
| I've never been diagnosed with any form of neurodivergence,
| though therapists have suggested that there's a good chance I'd
| be diagnosed if I saw a specialist. But this time I noticed
| that my employer's definition of "disabled" included not only
| neurodivergence but also depression, which I do have a
| diagnosis for. So... now I'm disabled.
|
| I have no idea what use the label is when it's so broadly
| defined. It doesn't give my employer any information that would
| help them support me in any way. Fingers crossed there is some
| benefit to it.
| nickff wrote:
| It probably helps the employer demonstrate that they hire and
| retain disabled people, likely assisting with some government
| quotas, and defenses against lawsuits by aggrieved ex-
| employees.
| aeturnum wrote:
| 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 current social
| structure is for productivity and capacity going forward. We
| may need to imagine new ways of living and structuring work and
| society to reach even higher levels of productivity.
| fsckboy wrote:
| > _It's a well understood issue in gifted kids psychology_
|
| if it's a well-understood issue in a scientific field, it's
| basically well-understood through the work of neurodivergent
| scientists.
| rahimnathwani wrote:
| Your point about Stanford having a larger-than-average
| proportion of 'extremely gifted' kids is reasonable. Perhaps
| the smartest 20% at Stanford are drawn from the smartest 0.1%
| nationally.
|
| But I think you're too dismissive of this part:
| The professors Horowitz interviewed largely back up this
| theory. "You hear 'students with disabilities' and it's not
| kids in wheelchairs," one professor told Horowitch. "It's just
| not. It's rich kids getting extra time on tests."
|
| You said "One person in it claims the kids aren't really
| disabled because they don't have wheelchairs" but this is a
| straw man. The professor did _not_ say this.
|
| If you read the statement charitably, the professor only
| pointed out two things that are probably true, which I
| paraphrase below:
|
| - most people, when they hear about students with disabilities,
| imagine physical disabilities
|
| - the professor has seen that a sizable proportion of students
| classified as disabled do not require accommodations
|
| Now, we could argue about what are reasonable accommodations
| and which are not. This is where I'm interested to hear your
| perspective.
|
| I assume you are in favor of these two:
|
| - kid needs wheelchair and a ramp, so kid can attend class
|
| - kid needs glasses, so kid can see the whiteboard
|
| I assume you are not in favor of this one:
|
| - kid cannot find the derivative of 2x^2, so kid is allowed to
| use a CAS calculator for Calculus 1 exams
|
| What do you think about this one?
|
| - kid can pass the English Composition 1 exam, but only if
| given twice as much time as other students
| smcg wrote:
| I went to an elite school. I had undiagnosed depression and ADHD
| and I almost failed out.
|
| I don't think I needed more time on tests but I definitely needed
| medication and counseling. The counseling resources available at
| the time were not adequate and medication was difficult to get.
| abbadadda wrote:
| Same. I was on academic probation freshman year. Managed to
| recover and graduate. But I didn't get diagnosed with ADHD/ASD
| until I was 38.
| pelorat wrote:
| An "elite school" is not for everyone because everyone is
| different.
|
| You did not need medication and counseling. What you needed was
| a regular public college.
| rdtsc wrote:
| The fact that this shows higher numbers than the community
| college kids ("...have far lower rates of disabled students...")
| is interesting too. Yeah, one can argue that Stanford maybe is
| just so accommodating that it just serves as a great attractor
| for people with disability. I somehow doubt that.
|
| I wouldn't be surprised that this is part of some coaching
| program too. It seems too random for folks to just "stumble" on a
| hack. There are few of these outfits which advertise that they
| can "get your kid accepted into colleges" if you buy their
| services.
|
| > But the current language of the Americans with Disabilities Act
| (ADA) allows students to get expansive accommodations with little
| more than a doctor's note.
|
| If we take honesty out of the equation, what's the downside for
| not declaring a disability, if it's not that hard to get a note
| from a doctor? You get better housing, and more time on tests. I
| am surprised the number is not higher, actually like 75% or
| something.
| ribosometronome wrote:
| Or that community college largely serves a different class of
| students who have worse access to mental health resources than
| students who attend Stanford do. The articles quoting of
| flippant professors and inability to see such potential obvious
| issues really shines a negative light on its publication.
| mberning wrote:
| This is super common in affluent school districts. Bulldozer
| parents with lots of time and resources eventually get their kid
| some diagnosis that confers benefits in their schooling. Be it
| additional time on assignments, one on one tutoring, or whatever.
| They carry these diagnoses, habits, and expectations to college.
|
| To be clear I am not making light of or dismissing legitimate
| issues. Simply pointing out that there are some that take
| advantage of the systems that exist.
|
| You actually are starting to see this in the corporate world.
| People with a laundry list of diagnoses and other statuses that
| make them very tricky to let go for performance reasons.
| Animats wrote:
| Is that something a Stanford student would want on their
| permanent record? Employers or the government might be able to
| obtain that information. You could be flagged for life as a
| reject.
|
| Under the Trump administration, accommodations for mentally
| disabled people are no longer enforced. Most of the enforcers
| were laid off. The new policy is "encouraging civil commitment of
| individuals with mental illness who pose risks to themselves or
| the public or are living on the streets and cannot care for
| themselves in appropriate facilities for appropriate periods of
| time." [1]
|
| [1] https://www.whitehouse.gov/presidential-
| actions/2025/07/endi...
| jdefr89 wrote:
| I hold a R&D Position at an MIT lab. I also hold gov clearances
| for DoD work. They are pretty accepting of the fact that a lot
| of folks in the field are neurodivergent. No one cares because
| if you deliver results you deliver results. No one cares about
| shit under the Trump administration because its an absolute
| joke that has thus far only stood to get in the way of the way
| we carry out research. The party of "minimal government" sure
| as hell loves to tell public established institutions how to
| carry out their own damn business.
| 10000truths wrote:
| Disclosing an individual student's information to third parties
| without express consent is a violation of FERPA laws.
| christkv wrote:
| I was literally reading the same stuff happening in Norway and
| two young women at the university spoke up about it. The main
| issue there was the abuse of doctors time lying about issues to
| get extra time on the exams as the extra time requires a doctor's
| note.
| powerclue wrote:
| That doesn't seem outrageously high for a high cap school?
|
| 15-20% of the world is estimated to have a disability. So
| Stanford population is high, but approximately double the average
| of a random global population sample.
|
| Now, think about the selection pressures Stanford applies.
| Stanford selects students who are fighting for top academic
| honors. Those students are dealing with brutal competition, and
| likely see their future as hanging on their ability to secure one
| of a small number of slots in the school. Anxiety would be
| genuinely higher in the student body than, say, students at a mid
| rate state school.
|
| Stanford wants students with strong test scores, especially those
| who are strongly capable in mathematics. High spatial awareness,
| cognitive integration, and working memory can be positive traits
| in some autistic people and some find strong success in
| standardized environments and in mathematics.
|
| We're also improving diagnostic tools for autism and ADHD, and
| recognizing that the tools we used missed a lot of cases in young
| women, because they present differently than for young men.
|
| Imagine a house party where the guests are selected at random
| from MIT or Stanford, then imagine you selected guests at random
| from, say, all Americans. Are you telling me you'd be surprised
| if the MIT and Stanford crowd had a noticeably different
| population demographic than the overall American population?
| pelorat wrote:
| > 15-20% of the world is estimated to have a disability.
|
| Not a chance in hell.
| IshKebab wrote:
| Well... in the UK it's now around 25%:
|
| https://commonslibrary.parliament.uk/research-
| briefings/cbp-...
|
| However, big caveat - it's self-reported. If you look at how
| many people get disability benefit it's around 10%.
|
| So whether or not that is true depends entirely on what you
| mean by "disability" which is obviously not a well defined
| term.
| toast0 wrote:
| > However, big caveat - it's self-reported. If you look at
| how many people get disability benefit it's around 10%.
|
| I don't know about the UK, but in the US, in order to get
| social security disability, you need to have a documented
| disability and there's also income limits. If you have a
| disability, but you manage to find a career despite the
| disability, you'll lose eligibility for social security
| disability or at least you'll lose the social security
| payments. Depending on the disabilities in question, I
| think it's reasonable that 60% of people with a disability
| can find work that pays enough that they are no longer
| eligible for a disability payment and/or they've reached
| the age where they get a retirement/old age insurance
| benefit rather than disability.
| powerclue wrote:
| If you have better data, I'm sure the world would love to
| have it. The world, however, seems to agree the number is
| somewhere around 15-20%.
|
| World Health Organization: 16%
|
| https://www.who.int/news-room/fact-
| sheets/detail/disability-...
|
| UN Department of Economic and Social Affairs: 15%
|
| https://www.un.org/development/desa/disabilities/resources/f.
| ..
|
| CDC: 25% of Americans
|
| https://www.cdc.gov/disability-and-health/articles-
| documents...
|
| ROD Group: 22%
|
| https://www.rod-group.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/09/The-
| Glo...
| Aloisius wrote:
| US Census Department: 8.3% of 18-34 year olds
|
| https://www.census.gov/library/visualizations/2024/comm/dis
| a...
| missedthecue wrote:
| Easily _wayyy_ more than that given both the loosening
| standards of what a disability is combined with over-
| diagnosis. But I get your sentiment. When I was a kid,
| disabled meant you were in a wheelchair or needed someone to
| physically feed you, and now it means you have an Adderall
| prescription.
| Aloisius wrote:
| 8.3% of Americans 18-34yo have a disability according to the
| Census department.
|
| Stanford's rate is 4.3x higher than that.
|
| Add in that _half_ of all students who claim a disability have
| no record of a diagnosis or disability classification prior to
| beginning college, all the reports of rampant cheating in
| school, the Varsity Blues college-admissions scandal where some
| parents helped their kid fake disabilities to get ahead, and
| even people here who seem to think it 's ok to defraud the
| system to get ahead?
|
| I think perhaps elite schools need a better way to gauge an
| applicant's ethics to deny them entry since the last thing the
| world needs is more unethical people in positions of power.
| jeffbee wrote:
| > elite schools need a better way to gauge an applicant's
| ethics
|
| You are perhaps mistaking which side of the line Stanford
| would select for. It is a school that produces and prefers
| sociopaths. Its engineering curriculum, almost uniquely among
| universities, has no requirement for an ethics course. You
| can fulfill Stanford's "Technology in Society" requirement by
| taking a course where you network with VCs for a semester. It
| is a factory for making jerks.
| bhelkey wrote:
| > 15-20% of the world is estimated to have a disability. So
| Stanford population is high, but approximately double the
| average of a random global population sample.
|
| Stanford is not a random sample of the global population. Most
| notably, Stanford undergraduates are young, primarily between
| 18-24[1]. 8.7% of people in the US from ages 18-29 have a
| disability [2].
|
| [1] https://www.meetyourclass.com/stanford/student-population
|
| [2] https://askearn.org/page/statistics-on-
| disability#:~:text=8....
| TrackerFF wrote:
| Let's look at the probability another way:
|
| If 1 in 5 are obese, would it be fair to assume that 1 in 5
| Olympic runners are also obese?
| lazide wrote:
| Why wouldn't they, if it gives them some advantage?
| guizadillas wrote:
| It's funny how upset most comments are with the realization that
| a lot more people are disabled while most of the users in HN are
| probably on the spectrum
| dunk010 wrote:
| The whole thrust of the article is complaining about timed tests
| and some kids getting more time. That's doubtless unfair if some
| are overclaiming, but the real solution is to not do timed tests
| at all - they are only serving to produce an arbitrary bell curve
| so that some can have higher grades and get better career
| opportunities. Better to not have a timer at all, and let
| people's actual ability shine.
| throwaway314155 wrote:
| Realistically there has to be _some_ time limit. No one is
| going to sit in a room for 10 hours while you finish your test.
| dunk010 wrote:
| Sure. I doubt that if some test at the moment takes an hour
| then you're getting much extra benefit at the five hour mark.
| The whole point of the time compression is to spread the
| grades out - along an axis different to "competence".
| clusterhacks wrote:
| >whole point of the time compression is to spread the
| grades out
|
| I suspect that is true for standardized tests like the SAT,
| ACT, or GRE.
|
| I suspect in classroom environments that there isn't _any
| intent at all_ on test timing other than most kids will be
| able to attempt most problems in the test time window. As
| far as I can tell, nobody cares much about spreading grades
| out at any level these days.
| clusterhacks wrote:
| Why?
|
| How strong is the argument that a student completing a test
| in 1 hour with the same score as a student who took 10 hours
| that the first student performed "better" or had a greater
| understanding of the material?
| throwaway314155 wrote:
| > Why?
|
| Teachers have lives, including needing to eat and sleep.
| clusterhacks wrote:
| 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 a
| room with no devices to take an SAT test on paper. Both
| kids make perfect scores. You have no information on
| which student took longer. How are the two test takers
| different?
| spullara wrote:
| Show me the incentives and I will show you the outcome.
| https://www.goodreads.com/quotes/11903426-show-me-the-incentive-
| and-i-ll-show-you-the-outcome
| Glyptodon wrote:
| FWIW a lot of the disability disclosure instructions for
| statistical purposes say stuff like "ever had cancer" and other
| qualifications that I find curious (because they don't really
| seems to be truly indicative of having a disability or not). (Not
| that it has anything to do with the main point of the article.
| Even in K12 a certain type of affluent family makes services into
| a game.)
| canucktrash669 wrote:
| Wifey works at uni. From all her stories, sounds like a strategy
| I'd adopt to boost my GPA, if it existed back then.
|
| Of course, there are also true cases where it takes 4 hours to
| complete a 30-minute test.
|
| All it does is kill the GPA signal completely. One amongst many
| before, pure noise now.
|
| [edit: not denying people need it. but it appears like folks that
| don't also use it]
| throwaway-aws9 wrote:
| Tell me about it. My best hire had a horrible GPA.
|
| But I get it. If the job doesn't demand creativity but just
| following orders, GPA was a signal for it.
| pelorat wrote:
| If someone needs 4 hours to complete a 30-minute test they
| should be in a school for the disabled.
| the__alchemist wrote:
| The most illuminating line:
|
| > here's been a rising push to see mental health and
| neurodevelopmental conditions as not just a medical fact, but an
| identity marker
| TuringNYC wrote:
| I had neither healthcare coverage in high school nor expensive
| college consultants. When I got to college (Cornell) all my
| friends told me they had plenty of extra time on the standardized
| exam (the SAT) by virtue of doctors letters declaring conditions
| requiring accommodations. I'm sure some of these were legitimate.
| But practically everyone I spoke to supposedly had ADHD and
| resulting accommodations on the SAT. I'm not a MPH or
| Epidemiologist, but does 80% or 90% of the student population
| truly have a condition requiring accommodations?
|
| Once 10 or 20% of students are doing this, it isnt unexpected for
| _everyone_ to start doing it just to get on an even playing
| field. As usual, the poor students lose out because they cannot
| afford the doctors or expediters who can facilitate all these
| things.
| IAmBroom wrote:
| You've made a much larger claim (80-90%) than the article. That
| is interesting. And anedata, unless you have solid evidence of
| your opinion.
| TuringNYC wrote:
| >> You've made a much larger claim (80-90%) than the article.
| That is interesting. And anedata, unless you have solid
| evidence of your opinion.
|
| Firstly No evidence provided and none needed as an
| unscientific anecdata supporting my personal shock.
|
| - Many of these accomodations for SATs are done in high
| school and then it isnt required anymore, so naturally people
| dont ask once they have already gotten into college. The SAT
| used to be a singular choke point for top schools, and
| becomes irrelevant immediately after.
|
| - I was speaking about SAT and the article was talking about
| accomodations needed for college housing and other things
|
| 1. I provided an anecdote based on friends' personal
| statements, not statistics based on school, you should trust
| the school's stats, but i'd really like to see the stats from
| The College Board on SAT scores, with a WHERE clause on only
| scores/accomodations for students going to top schools
|
| 2. I provided an anecdote that may well be wildly inaccurate
| being n=1
|
| 3. I entered to college in 1996, we're 29yrs off from my
| experience and the article
|
| 4. As I said above, accomodations in college != accomodations
| for SAT
| olalonde wrote:
| It seems a bit ridiculous. How long before people claim "low
| IQ" or "bad memory" as a condition?
| lisbbb wrote:
| Wait until you find out how many students are using performance
| enhancing drugs to help them study!
| apexalpha wrote:
| My father is a super stubborn Dutch guy. Needs to see proof of
| something 10 times before he changes a long held believe.
|
| Long time ago something came up like this in the Netherlands.
| Some massive, unexplained increase in disability.
|
| I asked how could this ever be possible?
|
| He asked: "Are any of the disabilities that show a massive
| increase _not_ objectively measurable but still eligible for
| subsidies?
|
| At the time I thought it was such a backwards way of thinking but
| over the years I can't shake this sentence.
| seizethecheese wrote:
| There was a kid in my high school physics class who went to
| Stanford. One time, someone broke the curve on the midterm test,
| making it hard for most students to get an A. The future Stanford
| student's mom visited the teacher to beg for extra credit
| assignments. He got his A.
|
| I suspect Stanford selects for students who are smart, yes, but
| most exceptional at gaming the system. Perhaps this is a natural
| consequence of watering down the difficulty of classes and
| standardized tests.
| vasilipupkin wrote:
| this is a flat out lie and a case of bad journalism
|
| it's not 38% - it's 1 in 4 or 25%, according to Stanford's own
| website https://oae.stanford.edu/students/dispelling-myths-about-
| oae
|
| and that number includes students getting literally any kind of
| accommodation whatsoever. Allergies, food allergies, carpet
| replacement, etc, etc
| pelorat wrote:
| Because it's bullshit? Kids today don't understand that they are
| not special, everyone's different and the diagnosis you get from
| a TikTok video is not real.
| mvdtnz wrote:
| I watch a lot of bodycam DUI arrests on Youtube (I'm not proud of
| it - it's a guilty pleasure) and something I have noticed is that
| close to 100% of young female suspects claim to have ADHD,
| anxiety, depression or all 3. This generation has been trained to
| use these three pathologies to excuse poor behaviours. So it
| wouldn't be a surprise to see them using it to excuse poor
| academics, even preemptively.
| fwip wrote:
| Consider that popular videos are those that play into
| preconceived stereotypes. I doubt your videos are represent of
| all DUI arrests.
| 1970-01-01 wrote:
| Tldr: If you are actually smart, you leverage as much of the
| social system to your advantage that you can get away with. It's
| called being street smart. Don't blame the kids for being street
| smart.
| encroach wrote:
| Why put a time limit on exams? Why not put everyone on the same
| playing field by allowing unlimited time to take the exam? The
| majority of exams at my university have no time limit (within the
| operating hours of the testing center), and it works well. At the
| end of the day, if you don't know the material, having more time
| isn't going to help you.
| paulpauper wrote:
| Yeah that is a good point. Either you know it or you do not.
| slibhb wrote:
| We will end up with everyone identifying as disabled (or at least
| "neurodivergent"). Then we'll all be back on the same level and
| someone will have to invent a new category that will also grow
| until it too encompasses everyone. And so on.
| IAmBroom wrote:
| Nihilistic guesses are fun. They make you look smart, without
| any of the difficulty of understanding or thinking of
| solutions.
| slibhb wrote:
| The solution is learning to tell people "you do not meet our
| criteria for being disabled". Alternatively, Congress could
| amend the ADA or someone could sue and win a court decision
| changing how it is interpreted.
| jjtheblunt wrote:
| you just reminded me of the Rush song The Trees, though not
| quite the same meaning
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Trees_(Rush_song)
| Aurornis wrote:
| > one professor told Horowitch. "It's just not. It's rich kids
| getting extra time on tests."
|
| This is a blunt quote, but it gets at a key part of the problem:
| Qualifying as having a disability can come with some material
| benefits in many schools.
|
| The intentions are good: Schools are doing what they think is
| best to accommodate and help students with disabilities. It has
| been a high priority for decades. However, some of these
| accommodations come with academic advantages. Extra time on tests
| is the most common one I've seen.
|
| Combine this with the ease of qualifying for a disability (look
| up the right doctor online, schedule an appointment, pay
| insurance copay, walk out with a note) and it became an easy,
| cheap, and tangible academic advantage.
|
| One of the schools I'm familiar with switched to giving everyone
| the same, longer time period for taking test because it was
| becoming obvious that the system was being abused.
| gtirloni wrote:
| > The intentions are good: Schools are doing what they think is
| best to accommodate and help students with disabilities
|
| Considering it's the US, schools are just avoiding to get sued.
| bloppe wrote:
| I just had an edifying conversation with a recent Standford grad
| who was a TA, and she talked about how some huge percentage of
| the class has testing accommodations that allowed them to take
| all exams in a private room, with no supervision, and with access
| to their phones (and the internet).
|
| And the professors and TAs were not even allowed to ask the
| students what they needed those accommodations for.
| mikkupikku wrote:
| This sort of scamming has been going on for a long time, by rich
| kids particularly. I remember 20 years ago I was surprised to
| learn that one of my friends, a very clever guy from a very well
| off family, was supposedly so profoundly disabled that he could
| do all of his tests overnight and at home. When I asked him how
| he got such a sweet deal, the answer was _" My dad's a doctor."_
| iamwil wrote:
| My general impression of kids from elite colleges are that
| they're very good at finding some sort of loophole in the system
| to exploit, and they get lauded for it. And if they balk, for
| whatever reason, they feel like they're falling behind those that
| do. So then there's a feedback loop for everyone to take
| advantage of some kind of exploit to stay competitive. "You'd be
| stupid not to do X also, if everyone else is." with no consider
| to morals or character--because they're not easy to measure.
| fsmv wrote:
| What a disgusting article. It's abliest to say that disabled
| students won't be able to make it Stanford. The only weird part
| is calling anxiety and depression a disability.
|
| Saying that people who are using accommodations are cheating is
| morally repugnant.
|
| Instead of saying that we need to clamp down on people claiming
| disabilities, we should open up the accommodations to everyone.
| byronic wrote:
| The hyperbolic "surely a child with a learning disability can't
| (or shouldn't) go to college!" is very funny post-1950. John
| Keats wrote the definitive treatise on the subject and nobody
| read it. The secondary "oh no, rich kids are getting unfair
| advantages!" argument makes the article somehow worse and less
| informed. I feel dumber for having read it.
|
| My conclusion: Reason is running the world's dumbest cover for
| The Atlantic
| byronic wrote:
| why are 38 percent of Stanford students saying they're left-
| handed?
| spencer-p wrote:
| The article frames being smart and promising (to a university) as
| at odds with having a learning disability, which is not
| necessarily true. It also frames depression and anxiety as
| learning disabilities, which they are not.
| jdefr89 wrote:
| The amount of pressure young kids are under... I am surprised the
| numbers aren't much higher. I grew up with debilitating
| OCD/Tourettes. I am glad kids growing up today have more
| resources than I did. Society itself is sick and broken. If that
| many kids are having issues.. Maybe the system is the problem
| here?
| eZinc wrote:
| While I agree that smart people tend to play the system, I will
| offer another explanation.
|
| I think university students are just weirder now. They just don't
| have the same social skills as before. Maybe Covid has erased
| social skills and behaviors, or maybe the internet is too
| prevalent.
|
| I don't know what the social equivalent of the Overton Window
| would be, but I think that's shifted so hard that traditional
| autism tests would mark most modern students as autistic.
| loremip wrote:
| New York Times had an interesting podcast recently where they
| talked about how so many children are being diagnosed with autism
| to the point where it's hurting the severely autistic student
| population (https://www.nytimes.com/2025/11/24/podcasts/the-
| daily/autism...). There's a finite set of resources pooled for
| special needs students, and now most of these students have
| relatively minor symptoms compared to those with "profound
| autism" (which is a severe disability associated with the
| inability to speak or live independently).
|
| I suspect this is similar - rich parents are doing anything for
| an edge in their child's education and can get any diagnosis they
| desire. It's an unfair system.
| crackercrews wrote:
| The rate of autism diagnosis is really off the charts in MN
| these days...
| spoaceman7777 wrote:
| "Most of these students are claiming mental health conditions and
| learning disabilities, like anxiety, depression, and ADHD."
|
| This is clickbait. There are diseases and disorders, and we have
| medicine to treat them so that people can be functional in
| society (particularly, work and school).
|
| Nothingburger.
| lisbbb wrote:
| My wife has a cousin who basically gamed the system for
| undergraduate and law school. She grew up white, middle class,
| but her dad, being of Mexican descent (US born) allowed her to
| play up the Hispanic angle on college applications, landing her
| scholarships and better admissions. Then, for law school, she
| claimed she had ADHD so that she could get extra time on tests.
| It was all a scam.
| fwip wrote:
| Does she not have ADHD?
| neilv wrote:
| A few scattered comments, no single argument...
|
| Performance-doping by a large percentage of students at
| prestigious schools has been going on for decades. Separate from
| the people who are wired differently and really need the chemical
| tuning.
|
| Also, it seems a lot of students are on anti-depressants. (You
| might be, too, if you had pushy overachiever helicopter parents
| always pushing you. Or if the same career that paid for your
| affluent upbringing, including college admission advantages, came
| because a parent operated very selfishly in general.)
|
| Meds seem to be a go-to solution for many affluent families.
|
| Adderall doesn't let someone be the brightest student, but it
| helps them keep up with courseload, of study-heavy or lab-heavy
| classes -- to compete with the students who have better/more
| prior education/experience, better work practices, who prioritize
| studies over partying, or who are otherwise brighter as a student
| in some regard.
|
| Of the students who didn't actually have an ADHD disability, but
| ended up relying on the meds anyway, they aren't bad people.
| They're actually generally nice and smart, like everyone else. I
| hope it keeps working for them, or they are able to wean off
| without ill effects.
|
| One thing I really worry about is a different but related
| problem: a culture of cheating, most recently accelated by
| ChatGPT and the like. That seems to be having really bad societal
| effects already.
|
| One thing I wonder about is whether some of the students on other
| meds, like for depression, are having too much edge of passion
| and creativity taken off. Although the college admissions and
| career prep books and coaches tell students how to give the
| corporate-standard performative indicators of "passion", that
| comes out as a very different thing, and maybe all the meds has
| something to do with that. (I suppose a professor who's been
| engaged for a few decades would have a good perspective on this.)
| gwbas1c wrote:
| > when the latest issue of the DSM, the manual psychiatrists use
| to diagnose patients, was released in 2013, it significantly
| lowered the bar for an ADHD diagnosis.
|
| I've suspected for many years that ADHD is like Medical
| Marijuana. Some people _really need it._ For others, it 's just a
| way to get legal access to stimulants.
| nickelcitymario wrote:
| Is it really surprising that the top minds in STEM might not be
| neuro-typical?
|
| You can't tell me you think Bill Gates, Steve Jobs, Steve
| Wozniak, Mark Zuckerberg, Peter Thiel, Elon Musk (!), etc., have
| "normal" brains.
|
| Whether that should count as a disability or a superpower is
| subjective. ADHD and Autism often present as strengths in one
| arena, and weaknesses in another. Speaking overly broadly: An
| aptitude for hard facts and logic, with a difficulty with
| emotions and social cues.
|
| That's not to say that everyone who presents as such should be
| given the same accommodations. It's probably being abused. But
| that doesn't mean they're lying about their brains. It took a
| doctor to diagnose it. What more would you want to see beyond "a
| doctors note"?
| meindnoch wrote:
| Probably the same reason why half of HackerNews think they have
| ADHD.
| dragonwriter wrote:
| > when the latest issue of the DSM, the manual psychiatrists use
| to diagnose patients, was released in 2013
|
| Does _Reason_ do even the most basic fact checking? The most
| recent "issue" of the DSM (DSM-V-TR) was released in 2022.
| gwbas1c wrote:
| I had a friend in high school who was able to take untimed tests.
| I later heard a teacher griping, because they didn't think my
| friend needed them. (I agree.)
|
| My friend had a very good life, until he took a job that really
| clashed with his, uhm, tendency to be a perfectionist. When we
| caught up (because we hadn't spoken in a few years,) it was clear
| he didn't have much insight into how his perfectionism worked
| against him in the job. (It was a job where quantity was more
| important than perfection.)
|
| What would have helped my friend more? Not the diagnosis that he
| needed untimed tests. Instead, counseling where he understood his
| difference, how to make best use of it, and when he needed to let
| go and not be a perfectionist.
| jonfromsf wrote:
| I wouldn't be surprised if 80% of Stanford students are anxious
| or depressed. Isn't everybody, especially young kids who have
| spent the last decade going through the meat grinder of prepping
| for elite college admissions?
| OhMeadhbh wrote:
| Dude lost me at the first sentence: "The students at America's
| elite universities are supposed to be the smartest, most
| promising young people in the country."
|
| Very clearly the author has never visited Stanford or UCB.
|
| Which is to say, "elite" universities do not base admissions
| solely on what I assume they mean when they say "smartest."
| phplovesong wrote:
| Step 1. Go to harvard.
|
| Step 2. Make daddy pay.
|
| Step 3. Get a retard diploma.
|
| Step 4. Graduate by literally cheating.
|
| Step 5. Prey a company will hire you after they find you are a
| retard from harvard.
| skeeter2020 wrote:
| From the website for Stanford's OAE:
|
| "The need for therapy and other kinds of mental health care is
| often stigmatized in our home communities. Even though our
| families love us, they believe other options will better help us
| with our problems."
|
| Imagine paying Standford tuition for your kid so they can fund
| this sort of know-it-all BS that attempts to undermine
| relationships. "it's not that your family doesn't love you,
| they're jsut stupid and don't known as much as us." They have a
| major conflict of interest in getting people diagnosed and
| registered with their services.
| SabrinaJewson wrote:
| I don't know why you're so angry at this statement, because
| it's factually true. Do you truly believe that the proportion
| of families who stigmatize mental health care is negligible?
| carabiner wrote:
| I had a college roommate who got hit by a car and was in a coma
| with lasting mental deficits. He was a mechanical engineering
| major, and because of his "disability" he got 2x time allowed on
| exams. It did not seem right to me, but oh well.
| next_xibalba wrote:
| This is what trending towards zero sum looks like. The cracks in
| society are growing ever wider. Failure to get into the top
| schools and obtain top grades is perceived as potentially life
| ruining. Hence all this cheating, and, also, grade inflation.
| deadeye wrote:
| Reading the comments here people seem to care more about what is
| "good" for the individual than what is good for the institution.
|
| If you have learning disability that requires "assistance" at an
| elite university, then why can't I play in the NBA with stilts
| while being allowed to double dribble and travel?
|
| Sure would be awesome for me to play in the NBA! Probably
| wouldn't be good for the NBA though.
| xn wrote:
| There seems to be an obvious solution.
|
| When I went to the DMV and couldn't pass the vision test without
| my glasses, they put on my driver's license an indication that I
| only passed with the accommodation of corrective lenses.
| BrandoElFollito wrote:
| I was recently wondering that since in the US the race is
| declarative and such a big thing, why don't people self declare
| being <of the currently most interesting race>?
|
| If this brings you points at entey exams or similar bonuses - why
| not (mis)using that mechanism?
|
| Or maybe I have as a European the wrong impression about positive
| discrimination based on race in universities? (I do not nit jave
| recent data, just remember that people mentioned that they did
| not play the "race card" to be admitted)
| whirlwin wrote:
| Maybe I'm too cold or cynical here, but I would make it
| compulsory to indicate the disability in the diploma with an
| annotation or comment.
|
| Or possibly the other way around: "Completed degree on
| standardized terms "
| reeeli wrote:
| because leadership needed a lot of irrrrational bullshit to
| justify their incompetence in the urgently imminent case that the
| biological and academic descendants of their "generation"
| outperformed them in a a ... waffle? whiff? ... I apologize, I
| don't know the term, and I only identified part of the heap of
| bullshit the old "guard" used to keep the kids "dumb enough"
| (136.9 - 144.3 IQ when they enter the horticultured league) but
| it's a great concern, nevertheless ... "housing"? ... in 2025?
| how retarded were you peeps 15 years ago? how the fuck did you
| survive? OH WAIT, YOU BOMBED IRAN? brrrrr, so evil of youuuuu
|
| but it's wonderful we can debate this, really. I'm glad we get to
| exchange words, everybody, all of us!
|
| Thank GOD, the OLD FATHERS of academia left some room ... to walk
| circles in ... and that they left so many of the questions they
| had and inspired to be left unanswered by the few/many who got
| in/didn't get in(to) the space that would give the incredible
| rarity of human brains with that specific kind of passionate
| curiosity in this (Tao universe measure something) vast galaxy of
| ours that bit they ... deserved? needed? wanted? desired?
| jwilber wrote:
| Would love to see the percentage of Forbes 30u30 who also had
| (sorry, claimed) a disability in college.
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