Amid a rapid rise in the number of students with disability diagnoses — diagnoses of learning disability, in particular — colleges and universities “have magnified services to help those students keep pace – from personal note-takers to high-tech computer equipment that reads aloud and types research papers. … The number of college students with disabilities has grown fivefold from three decades ago, when it was estimated at 2.3 percent.” At Regis University in Colorado, the number of students receiving accommodations has jumped more than fifty percent in three years, from 240 to 370. “The number of college students diagnosed with disabilities increased dramatically after the 1990 passage of the Americans with Disabilities Act, [Regis disability services director Joie] Williams said.” About 600 students use the “Access Center” at Denver’s Metropolitan State College: its services, which by law are free to students, include uploading textbooks onto students’ iPods. (Jennifer Brown, “More colleges helping with disabilities”, Denver Post, Nov. 26). For accommodation demands at the high school level, see, e.g., this Mar. 24 post.
ADA: Colleges bend to accommodation demands
Amid a rapid rise in the number of students with disability diagnoses — diagnoses of learning disability, in particular — colleges and universities “have magnified services to help those students keep pace – from personal note-takers to high-tech computer equipment that reads aloud and types research papers. … The number of college students with disabilities […]
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I’m not sure what the controversy is here… is it the implication that many of these students aren’t disabled, or outrage that the school is helping the disabled, or?
Ah, Justinian Lane. For someone who purports to disagree with so much that is written here you must not actually be a regular reader. This website is very clearly marked as talking about the “cost of our legal system,” and has very little to do with outrage.
Why are you trying so hard to read an “implication” into an explicit post?
Of the posts I’ve read here, I would estimate in excess of 90% of them detail some flaw or problem with our justice system.
The “cost of our legal system” is generally described in negative terms; the posts usually describe or imply a method in which those costs can and should be reduced.
I’m just not seeing it in this post. If the point of this post was to be purely informative, it succeeded. I was unaware of facts and figures relating to college students with disabilities.
If the point of the post was to persuade me of something, I have no idea of what. Perhaps I’m just being overly cynical and this post was intended to be a contrast to many of the other ADA-related posts which focused on abuses of the system.
Justinian: The objection is to the cost and stupidity of the government mandated expenditures.
There is no need for English teachers so great, literature must be read out loud to dyslexics. If the latter has a talent for small engine repairs, he would be better off learning those.
By the same token, must an English major be accomodated for his hopeless lack of ability in small engine repair (need a latin word for klutz, here)?
It is ironic, but predictable, the ADA reduced the employability of the disabled, due to unjust, unrealistic coerciveness.
In the past, the disabled and the employer accommodated each other informally. The disabled competed on lower salary. The employer had lower productivity expectations in return.
Now, a disabled person walks in, the employer sees massive health costs and endless litigation over sink and mirror heights in the bathroom. The ADA made the disabled unwelcome everywhere. The open hostility of the ADA to business misled the disabled into thinking they could make money by lawyer bullying and intimidation of productive sectors.
It should be repealed to increase the employability of the disabled again.
Given how the cited article focuses on lesser-known local colleges, and that the numbers seem to be shooting up fairly recently (i.e., long after the passage of the ADA), I can’t help but wonder whether these schools have decided that disabled students constitute a market opportunity for them. Rather than as a matter of legal compulsion, they have made the business decision that these freely-available accommodations are an economically rational perk for them to offer in order to compete for students.
The post by Supremecy Claus makes good sense. It does assume a fact that is not in evidence; namely that the truly disabled abuse the law.
The large cost of ramps and curb cuts are wrong because there is negligible usage of the required items. The law entices the abuse seen in SAT testing and other educational settings. Those abuses are by those with statutorial problems.
There was a blind fellow, Eddie, who did very well on the Jeapordy Program. He inspired me and many others. We should be accomodating to those with real disablements.
Burning billions of dollars for the hypothetical and statutorial disabled does nothing for the truly disabled and diverts funds from those who really need the funds, including the truly disabled.
As long as this nation has existed there have been folks that have had challenges, and after each military conflict they increase in numbers.
Seems that for 200 years they got along fine in some manner, maybe not as equals, which in fact they are not, does not mean they are not important or can’t provide for a family and society either, they have and they do!
But hey it makes sense for all of us to pay a half a billion dollars so that a couple hundred folks restricted to chairs can see the river in the bottom of the Grand Canyon don’t it?
The education system is running scared as hell, so they spend and spend and over spend out of FEAR! FEAR of lawyers!
This site is loaded with ample examples whey business and government is constantly acting like asses out of nothing else than self preservation; ie, litigation avoidance!