Competitive Disability Friendly Colleges

aquapt
Tue, 24 Jul 2018 22:33:56 +0000

Well, the academic pace question is a legitimate one, but another way to frame the question would be to ask whether, at any given school, if you ended up having to lighten your course load because of your health and take longer to graduate, would you be able to make that work financially? If the answer is yes, then you’re not flying without a net in terms of having ups and downs in your functional capacity. If the school is a financial stretch and you know you can’t afford more than 8 semesters, then your back is a bit more to the wall as far as having to “keep pace” no matter what.

Snow-wise… it’s a consideration for sure. I personally know dozens of wheelchair users with a variety of health conditions, who have lived and worked and attended and/or taught at colleges in the Boston area over the years. They make it work, in part because of the robust disability community, unparalleled medical care, and public transit accessibility in Boston, and also the top-tier LTSS benefits in the state of MA. Do they get sick of getting snowed in, fighting for better snow removal, and so on? Definitely. But then again, when things really get intractable blizzard-wise, things tend to shut down anyway. (After all, faculty don’t live on campus, and if they can’t get to class, then class isn’t happening.) But yes, the winters get long and inconvenient and tiresome, and it’s something to think about. For whatever reason, though, the universities that have become real hubs of the disability community in higher ed, apart from UC Berkeley (which is really not living up to its legacy as the Birthplace of the Disability Rights Movement anymore), have been cold-weather schools - UW-Madison and UIUC in particular. There’s something to be said for having peer support and funding for programs that go beyond individual accommodations. http://disability.illinois.edu/ But that aspect is far more important to some people than others, so YMMV.

If you don’t like the South, that eliminates a lot of alternatives, leaving California and the Pacific Northwest. UDub could definitely be a contender - looks to have a pretty good Cinema and Media Studies program, too.