An article in the January 2026 issue of The Atlantic titled Accommodation Nation reports that the number of disability accommodation designated students is soaring at elite US schools such as Amherst College, Stanford University, Brown, Harvard, U Chicago, UC-Berkeley, and Princeton. Extra time & other accommodations are provided for these students when sitting for exams.
38% of students at Stanford have this designation, 34% at Amherst College, 20% at Harvard & at Brown, 17% at Princeton. The number of students qualifying for disability accommodations has soared at U Chicago & at Berkeley.
Although I have not read the article, News Nation (a 24 hour news stations) presented a segment based on this article from The Atlantic.
Wow! Purdue’s Disability Resource Services lists 8.6% of the student population registered with them, and only half that % have any kind of test accommodations.
38% seems high to me but I remember reading that private schools have a much higher percentage of kids with accommodations.
I wonder if there is some self selection happening in that schools that offer strong support accommodations end up getting more applicants and enrollees that need those services.
Rates were higher for female, nonbinary, multiracial, AI/AN, PI, veteran, and unmarried independent students, and lower for male, Black, Asian, and married independent students.
Disabling conditions include difficulty concentrating as well as difficulty making decisions due to assorted reasons including anxiety.
Testing time increases of 50% to 100% are common according to the article in The Atlantic. Students who get extra testing time score higher than those who do not receive extra time on tests such as the LSAT (which is the single most important admissions factor considered by elite law schools).
I’m disabled and work professionally in disability arts. Disabled people are at LEAST 25% of the global population, and the current consensus is that that figure is vastly undercounted (the composition of this figure often relies on census data - at least here in Canada I can say with certainty from the work I do that many people do not identify as disabled on the census because they are scared that if they do, they will be “taking something away” from more disabled people because they do not view themselves as “disabled enough,” or in many cases, disabled at all, despite having conditions that constitute a disability). I doubt there has been a marked increase in disabled students, but that these numbers are simply more reflective of the true number of disabled students who have existed on college campuses since Section 504 and the ADA came into effect (and that students now are more willing to seek formal accommodations rather than self-accommodate). If there has been a true increase, I think that is likely attributable to the fact that we have lived through the mass disabling effects of the COVID-19 pandemic.
Medical accommodations are certainly included in this and needing air conditioning for seasonal allergies goes through the disability office along with a single room for food allergies. This is the most allergic population of kids to go to college and as an allergist I write many letters.
As a parent who has a child with a disability - it is expensive, time-consuming and stressful to get a child properly diagnosed and get appropriate accommodations. I find it highly doubtful that there are lots of scofflaws able to easily get accommodations who are now overrunning colleges and universities.
I do think there is more awareness of disability since the ADA passed in 1990 (yes we’ve only had the ADA for 35 years), and the stigma attached to getting tested/diagnosed has lessened over time, though it is still prevalent. Many parents of students with disabilities talk about how much their children resist getting accommodations due to not wanting to seem different, rather than having students reaching out to grab any and all special treatment.
Also, colleges and universities are not required to allow accommodations requested if the accommodations would fundamentally change the parameters of the course/how the course works. IEPs and 504 plans are only operational until the end of high school. Many colleges require updated testing to consider giving accommodations, and accommodations are much more limited at the college/university level.
Each professor also figures out what accommodations work for their classroom. For my student with disabilities, the disability office contact their professors at the start of each semester with the fact that they have accommodations and let the professors know what accommodations the student has. The professors then decide which ones work within for their specific course.
I find there are lots of anecdotes of over diagnosed disabilities allowing unfair advantage, but very little actual data supporting that.
Generally these students only get extra time on high stakes tests, not all of their work. They are meeting deadlines in real world things like projects, assignments, etc.
This 100 percent. My son receives accomodations for dyslexia. There are studies indicating that 20 percent of the population is dyslexic. His college required him to submit a full neuro psych evaluation with results from a battery of testing. He couldn’t just submit a doctor’s note. No doubt there are people out there who game the system. That was a big part of the varsity blues scandal where unscrupulous doctors were giving false diagnoses to wealthy clients. My issue with the Atlantic article is that there seems to be a lack of recognition of invisible disabilities. … and to answer @tsbna44’s question my kid functions very well in the workplace. He meets deadlines. He has never had a situation where a boss is expecting him to write an essay in an hour.
Seems like that means that it helps for the parents to have money and time to deal with this, which means that it is not surprising that accommodations are more common in high SES high schools than low SES high schools.
Yes, not only is it difficult to get insurance to cover neuro-pysch testing, which can be $2-5k for each testing period - you may also have to hire an outside legal advocate (more $$$) to actually get your school district to agree to the accommodation recommendations at your IEP meetings.
Not to mention, depending on where you live - getting a testing appointment can be a 6-9 month wait. Testing can take several days and then results usually take 4-8 weeks to fully get written up.
It is not uncommon for it to take 1-2 years after a parent, teacher or other person identifies a potential issue for a child to start receiving accommodations. And that’s if the family has the time and resources to be able to pursue testing and make sure accommodations are being provided, and nothing else delays forward progress.
I couldn’t read more than the beginning of the article due to paywall. Does it actually parse out what percentage of those students have extra time on tests accommodations vs other accommodations? The headline and the first few lines seem to conflate those things or obfuscate the information. Not all students with disabilities, even mental health ones like anxiety or depression, get extra time on tests as an accommodation. But, it felt like they were trying to suggest we should assume almost all of that 38% at Stanford for example do. I’d want to see data before jumping to that conclusion.
Also, as someone who was diagnosed with ADHD as an adult, I can attest to the notion that there was severe underdiagnosis of invisible disabilities until recent decades. When I attended my first living with ADHD classes, there were a ton of middle age and beyond high performing people who never got diagnosed and just had to grit it out for years. A significant part of the uptick is recognizing what was always there.
Speaking of UC Berkeley specifically, I am not sure I would say that this number has “soared.” Here is some data from the DSP (and please do go ahead and click, it’s interesting because it also lists types of disability and types of services offered): Annual Report and Data | Disabled Students' Program
I compared the numbers from the DSP page to enrollment numbers:
Year
Total Enrollment
Students served by DSP
Percentage
2024
45882
5711
12.45%
2023
45699
5273
11.54%
2022
45307
4920
10.86%
2021
45057
4585
10.18%
2020
42347
4153
9.81%
I did not list 2025 because I don’t have the number for total enrollment this year, however from the DSP page we do have the total number of students served by DSP this year, which is not a big increase over last year (5737 for 2025 vs. 5711 for 2024).
