25
votes
Why are 38 percent of Stanford students saying they're disabled?
Link information
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- Authors
- Emma Camp, Matt Welch, Lenore Skenazy, Autumn Billings, Liz Wolfe
- Published
- Dec 4 2025
- Word count
- 900 words
As someone legally considered disabled, and with an anxiety disorder myself (panic disorder, specifically), this was an incredibly infuriating article. I've had it since I was 6 (diagnosed at 16), and let me tell you, it's fucking misery... but it's also one of the many "invisible" disabilities (much like ADHD too), and unless someone actually sees me having an attack that results in me throwing up right in front of them, they wouldn't even know what I was going through. I have literally thrown up on my desk in the middle of a school test multiple times in my life precisely because I wasn't given any accommodations and was told if I left the room during the test I would be failed! But in most cases in my ordinary life I do manage to get to a bathroom in time so nobody is the wiser about my condition. And yet, despite me suffering like that, this author likely still would have included me in her "not really disabled" and "doesn't deserve accommodations" classification.
Who the fuck is this author to judge whether someone deserves any accommodation or not? She knows nothing about any of these students lives or problems, and this article presents nothing in the way of facts about them to justify her conclusion, other than the contextless singular statistic she's basing it all on. The article is basically just "kids these days", "the internet (and government regulation) is to blame", dismissive of mental-health issues, Libertarian bullshit.
And I've met way too many people exactly like her too. Ignorant people that lack empathy, and so simply can't understand what it's like for people with anxiety disorders (or any mental health/learning disabilities, for that matter). They probably assume that anxiety disorders are similar to their own occasional feelings of nervousness that they can just take a few deep breaths to get through, before going back to doing what they were beforehand as if nothing happened. But it's not like that at all, it's a near constant, all-consuming level of anxiety!
Fuck everything about this article, and its author. Ignorant asshole. And fuck reason.com while we're at it, too! IMO it's a Libertarian garbage site sharing actively harmful Libertarian opinions, like this one surreptitiously arguing for rolling back the progress we've made thanks to legislation like the ADA. And what's worse, they have the fucking gall act as if their positions come from a place of logical reasoning when it's anything but, it's ideological bullshit masquerading as "reason"!!!!!!!
p.s. This genuinely might be the angriest I have ever felt after reading an article posted here. And I'm also disappointed to see it got so many votes considering how devoid of anything other than pure speculation it is. And am likewise disappointed to see so many comments expressing similar opinions as the author too. I think I'm done with the internet for today. :(
There was another post about overdiagnosis a few months ago, with an article from a somewhat gross author as the jumping off point, and it's the most upset I've been with an internet conversation in a very long time. It's the only time on here that I've ever just deleted all my comments in a thread because I couldn't handle being pulled back into the topic at the time.
The tricky part is that I was trying to talk about my experience of a system that's seemed all too willing to rubber stamp me with whatever diagnosis is quickest and easiest, throw some medication at me, and mark the matter as "fixed" with no meaningful follow up. Rinse and repeat with a different diagnosis if I've managed to summon up the will to drag myself back into the loop again months or years later for another attempt. And by saying this, it seemed like I was immediately in league with the article author in people's minds.
It's a topic that touches on the hardest and most painful parts of our lives for those of us unfortunate enough to have personal experience with it, with a whole horde of genuinely dismissive thinkpiece-writing assholes hiding around every corner to tell us to just suck it up, and I think that's made it incredibly hard to tease out the nuance without seeing those assholes reflected in the other participants in the conversation - even on tildes, which is pretty much the only place on the internet that I see people managing to do so respectfully on so many other topics.
Saying that I've been harmed by diagnoses being treated as easy, throwaway things to keep patients moving through an overburdened system seemed to be (understandably) upsetting to a lot of people who've had the exact opposite struggle, but I see it as a facet of exactly the same problem. A diagnosis is an incredibly important thing, and a medical system willing to throw them at people without proper care is showing just the same disrespect to the seriousness of the situation as the "kids these days" brigade are showing from the opposite direction.
I think a few things are simultaneously true: there are calculated and deliberate efforts in the media to dismiss the seriousness of people's struggles; there are people going undiagnosed because the medical system doesn't give these issues the respect they deserve; there are people being misdiagnosed or overdiagnosed for the exact same reason; and I'd bet there are at least some people deliberately exploiting the system too, at the same time as others are not getting the help they need, simply because it's a hell of a lot easier for a calculating person to cynically look up and tick the right boxes in an arcane and harmful system than it is for a genuinely disabled person to navigate it.
Where does that leave us? Fucked if I know. I certainly lean towards the "just stop gatekeeping it and make everything accessible to everyone" answer, I just genuinely don't know what that looks like. But more than anything I felt the need to weigh in because I remember feeling the kind of pain I can see in your post, and because it's still on my mind however many months later, and because I think we do need to find a way to at least talk about these things without letting the echoes of the bad actors win out - even if I don't have a good answer for how.
[Edit] To whoever added the exemplary tag, thank you! The note you wrote brought a tear to my eye in the best possible way
This is painfully relevant for myself right now. It's so hard. People who on the outside think it's easy to scam for advantages and benefits: you try doing it without a good amount of money and time and ability to get free professional advise on how to game it. You talk to the "your own bootstrap" paper pushing gatekeepers who insult and demean and see it as their personal mission to "fix" the overdiagnosis "problem".
Thanks for saying something
I'm so sorry the article got under your skin, it got under mine as well. It's so odd to watch the clock turn backwards in this new weird era where the gains we made on acceptance, understanding, and clinical diagnosis. Framing it as "kids in wheelchairs" was pretty telling.
I have a late in life ADHD diagnosis, but went through school with a dyslexia diagnosis from age 8. My best friend in school also had dyslexia, and was allowed extended time to finish tests in math. With 20 additional minutes his scores went from 65-70% to 85-90%. It's not that he didn't know the math, it's that he couldn't parse the material in time. (reading questions when your dyslexic can be hard and time consuming) And for all the guffahing from the article, isn't the whole point of a test to see what a student knows, not necessarily how quickly they can finish a test. If extra time allows for students to improve their scores, I think it's something to consider. Perhaps the environment is causing low scores, not a lack of knowledge.
And even beyond that, fuck this whole "you're only disabled if I can see it".
I'm sorry to see you so upset, cfabbro
I was talking with a friend with anxiety recently, and they said having to deal with people is like having to get into a car you know has a history of suddenly having no steering or breaks. You gotta drive it and you gotta get somewhere, and you can see everyone else is driving just fine. But your car sometimes will suddenly seize up when you're on the highway or approaching a red and there's nothing you can do about it.
I still remember how happy they were when the neighborhood was preparing for a hurricane. It felt like their baseline is finally something everyone can see.
It's a disability for sure. And forget these people with no curiosity to try to become empathetic.
Fwiw sometimes I upvote an article because I think the discussion here is worthwhile to have and I want more eyes on the topic, not because I agree with it.
Similar spot here (legally disabled on various fronts, took a long time to get any support on said fronts, still far away from being self-sufficient), thanks for saving me from a painful article read and thanks to those who upvoted your post.
There is no actual evidence presented in this article that students are gaming the system, just the perception of medically unqualified observers (professors, journalists, etc), which are often very wrong. I don't see how this is any different than when people complain about the uptick in things like ADHD diagnoses. Even if the percentage of students with diagnoses like ADHD is higher than you (general you, not you OP) would have expected, why is that reason to distrust the opinion of experts who come up with the criteria for making a diagnosis?
Disability accommodations are actually already sort of hard to get. I've had plenty of students with no official accommodation struggle to get them — it often comes down to having the resources (both time, money, and know-how) to navigate the system to get a diagnosis from a doctor. It's not very surprising to me that rich students may have access to more of those resources than others.
In any case, this situation feels a little bit like the free school lunch debate to me. I personally am not really bothered if some people get accomodations who don't need them, if it means it is easier for students who do need them to get them. There are other more serious issues with fairness at the university level that would have a much bigger impact if they were addressed (cough legacy admissions cough).
Quote from the article:
Students in a high pressure environment getting diagnosed with anxiety or depression does not surprise me one bit, and I think that goes along with what you’re saying here.
The original article in the Atlantic (to which this is a reaction) was better and more detailed. As an example, that article explained that students taking the LSAT with accommodations scored on average (if I recall correctly) seven points higher then students without accommodations, which is both massively significant and suggests that something is not working right. To your point, the thing that isn't working right might not necessarily be that students are getting accommodations they don't need, but something isn't working.
Shouldn't you expect that students with accommodations score higher than students without?
Since some percentage of students without accommodations would benefit from them (unless you're assuming that every single disability has been accommodated), you should expect that some students are disadvantaged. Naturally, this will result in a lower average score for unaccommodated students.
If people were randomly selected to get extra time, then I would expect the people with extra time to get higher scores than those that don't.
But if people are getting extra time due to a disability, I would hope that it would result in changing a lower score to one closer to average. If they're getting higher scores than average, then it seems like something might be wrong? Maybe it's the selection process, or it's overcompensating, or something else is wrong. It's impossible to tell without more investigation.
Maybe it would be better to have them take the test as-is and use the disability as an explanation for the lower score? Colleges aren't required to take the students with the best scores.
Or what if they gave everyone extra time? Is the test supposed to measure how people do under time pressure, or how they do if they take as much time as they need?
It seems like this all hinges on what the test is designed to measure and how the score is supposed to be used.
That's not nessicarily the case, because you don't know where that student is starting from. There are students with ADHD who may excel in language, but be behind to average in math. Giving them accomodations and/or medication can help them reach their potential, which is likely higher than average. Not giving them accomodations would mean they would struggle, or be average, and have more limited outcomes. It can be the difference between choosing a difficult major over the easiest one available to these students. It can also be the difference between finishing college in 4 years vs 6, or dropping out due to burnout. Is it more important to have a level playing field, or for as many students as possible to reach their peak potential?
Accomodations don't always look like more time. Sometimes they can be as simple as having the questions be read to them, and answers provided verbally.
So glad you pointed this out. Taking this completely at face value, these are students who got accepted to Stanford despite their disability. I would, in fact, expect them to do better than average (even Stanford average) when their disability is accommodated.
Yes, we don’t know. I’ve since edited my comment to soften it, because it’s more of a “huh, what’s going on here” than proof of anything in particular.
I think where this “reaction” article misses is that it says 38% have diagnoses but doesn’t mention if 38% have accommodations. I would assume the number with accommodations is lower, but I haven’t seen the data or the original article.
I’d be really interested to seeing more research on this subject, because I wonder if you could attribute the higher scores just to less-stress and not needing to rush, or if there are other variables at play as well.
I know the LSAT is much harder than pre-college tests like the ACT, but I know that in my case, having an accommodation like “more time” would likely not have affected my score on the ACT at all - because I finished early and had time to go back and check my answers even. But there are definitely students with ADHD or anxiety or test anxiety that benefit from “extra time” accommodations.
I don't disagree there, re: something isn't working. Grade inflation in general is a big issue (also probably bigger than fake accommodations, but of course all of these things are related).
My first thought was that this might say something more about the education system as a whole than abusing disability accommodations. If it is students gaming the system, then that's a lot of kids who weren't properly prepared for college. There's always a bit of an adjustment, but that's still a high percentage of students seeking extra accommodations.
It reminds me of the recent article about how many students were never taught to read properly. That's such a basic skill that really screws people over for life. And given how many students at Stanford come from rich and influential families, I can see them getting passing grades at private schools largely to appease parents. The vice principal of my K-8 private school got fired for complaining about some kids ding-dong ditching her house because they came from a wealthy family, so... Yeah, I wouldn't put it past some schools to tell teachers to just grade certain students really well.
Chances are some of these students were genuinely undiagnosed, too, which is even more horrifying that it went undetected until getting to Stanford.
It's incredibly common for students who have parents who don't really believe in ADHD or autism or who attended schools that are broadly or universally accommodating - and thus don't need a 504/IEP for example - to still be undiagnosed in college.
I wasn't until my senior year of college but I was an AFAB smart kid without hyperactivity, so no one knew how to handle the fact I wouldn't do my homework unless I finished it in class other than letting me do a lot of makeup work in HS and college had me doing a ton of last minute work to get over the executive dysfunction hump.
However you also get accommodations for depression, anxiety, learning disabilities, etc. you can get a relevant accommodation for pretty much any diagnosis. And that's a good thing. More students would benefit from more flexibility IMO and we should be less worried about the possibility of someone "taking advantage"
I was at a health appointment today and the specialist asked me a number of times what kind of accomodations I had in school. None. Yes but what kind of adjustments? None. Yes but what was in your learning plan? None. I wasn't diagnosed until I was an adult drop out.
The closest thing I got to individual attention from elementary teachers was getting hit for bad moral character and willfully not listening. Highschool and beyond was better, I got time extension until they lost patience with me.
Bless his heart, I'm glad times have changed enough he couldn't conceive of an education system where someone could fall through the cracks anymore. It's rather hopeful actually.
A very good point. I forget about those assholes sometimes, since I went to a high school with very proactive parents. Everyone there had some sort of special learning need that regular schools couldn't accommodate, and parents had to go out of their way to find and enroll kids there. Some kids' families had even moved there from other states.
That's also why I'm so passionate and critical of the education system's current state. Everyone I know has been failed by schools in some way. Often because they'd slip through the cracks since the teachers can only split their attention among students so much, but there were also some serious horror stories. My local public high school has 3,000+ students, so... Yeah, kids are absolutely slipping through the cracks there even when they have very obvious needs and proactive parents. Private schools should be better in that regard, but I wouldn't be surprised if some kids still get missed just as a side effect of general shady "pass the rich kid" practices.
Finances are a big part of it. Even in college, even with really good student insurance, getting an ADHD diagnosis can be expensive or have a long wait. If your parents did it when you were a kid your pediatrician could have done it, but they want you to get a full psychological workup when you're older. (Tbh it's best practice but it's so cashy or time consuming to wait months many people give up.)
For several years there was no Medicaid accepting child psychiatrist in my county. Not sure if that has been fixed or if telehealth has solved it, but imagine having a depressed kid, or a teen with OCD and not being able to get them treatment because there's literally nowhere in your city, county, within a hundred miles.
And even good parents don't always see the issues because they just don't have the education themselves, or don't see it when they're exhausted from work, or whatever. Sigh
If it is a competitive situation, with grading that would potentially be based on the performance of other students in the class, I'm not sure how students gaming the system would not be properly prepared: the extra time in itself would be seen as a competitive advantage over other students. When teaching at a UC, my partner had several complaints from students with accommodations giving them extra time on timed tests because she didn't have any timed tests or assignments, and asked that she give timed tests instead so that they could be given extra time. They were certainly not all the students with accommodations, or even the majority of them, and their complaints were ineffectual, but those students were quite clearly interested in the competitive advantage. They were not bad students.
Just anecdotes, but I went to a similarish school to Stanford and there were many students I knew who self reportedly falsified an academic diagnosis for ADHD or autism to get extra time on exams. There were guides passed around group chats on how to do it.
There you go, it's because the definition criteria is skewed. Of course they're going to have anxiety or depression in an elite high stress environment. ADHD is just about par for the course for some of the most intelligent highest level min-maxing intelligent and motivated people.
I have a few friends who are faculty at private universities - Stanford, Claremont Mckenna, Duke - and a few at public universities - UC Santa Cruz, UC Berkeley, San Diego State, University of Hawaii - and there is a real difference when speaking to them about their experience. The private school professors, be it all folks who have been hired in the last 7 years, are all complaining heavily about their inability to fail students. Ones at Stanford and Claremont Mckenna have both cited needed to provide evidence of reaching out individually to students, offering extra tutoring or support, before they are able to submit a failing grade. On the flip-side, I've heard of professors at public school complaining about the number of students asking for exceptions - but not being under mandate or guidance to provide them. I've heard from all of them that the level of effort, comprehension, and engagement are all way down.
All to say, it doesn't sound like elite private schools are any more stressful. In most cases it sounds like it's nearly impossible to fail. Much to the chagrin of faculty working there.
Do you believe people with these conditions should be given special allowances? It seems to be this is just kind of normal every life stuff in today's world. They won't really be given allowances at their future jobs.
There aren't many instances at a job where you need to ask for allowances of this sort, i.e. an extra 30 minutes to complete a task that has a fixed start and stop time. If there are hard deadlines for certain tasks, almost always one can simply begin early. The only time I wouldn't support accommodations is if there are safety concerns surrounding the extended time allotment for a task (e.g. something like air traffic controllers or some such).
The academic setting of timed exams is just not something that is often reproduced elsewhere.
Without trying to talk a position on the larger question, I will answer your question by pointing out that in the US, the ADA requires companies to engage in an interactive process to provide reasonable accommodations for people with disabilities. In practice, the degree to which these accommodations are granted often hinges on an individual's capabilities to navigate the process, as @gpl put it:
Some of the allowances are more specific to schools than workplaces. Particularly tests and exams, which tend to have strict time limits, fairly rigid conditions (restrictions on using notes, requiring bluebooks or scantron sheets, forbidding external tools or devices, etc.), and an extra layer of mental pressure.
Most jobs don't have comparable tasks combining all of the above factors, or at least not on a regular basis. Workplaces can also be more flexible about allowances since... Well, they're not worrying about grading 60+ copies of every assignment. The sheer number of students is part of the reason schools are so rigid.
Related: https://apps.npr.org/unfit-for-work/
Woah.