Colleges Don't "Over-Accommodate" Disabilities (opinion)

"Yet a pattern of uncontested opinion pieces in spaces like The Atlantic (the newly published "Accommodation Nation"), The Chronicle of Higher Education ("Are Colleges Getting Disability Accommodations All Wrong?), The Wall Street Journal ("Colleges Bend the Rules for More Students, Give Them Extra Help") and, indeed, Inside Higher Ed itself ("How Accommodating Can (Should) I Be?") speaks to the enduring cultural conflict around how the Americans With Disabilities Act and Section 504 of the Rehabilitation Act are actualized in higher education."

"Setting the Table With Statistics It is common to see these claims begin from an assumption that disability accommodations " are skyrocketing"-a claim that sensationalizes statistics. One author cites the large volume of accommodation letters sent by a university per semester. Such a claim is rooted in either misunderstanding or deliberate misrepresentation of accommodations. At any institution, the total count of all accommodation letters sent appears disproportionately large, because each student is enrolled in multiple courses."

Opinion pieces in major outlets present recurring claims that colleges over-accommodate, framing accommodations as a cultural conflict about how the Americans With Disabilities Act and Section 504 are actualized in higher education. Members of the executive board of the Association on Higher Education and Disability (AHEAD) in Virginia intend to define and defuse recurring arguments of the 'Do Colleges Over-Accommodate?' type. Claims that disability accommodations are 'skyrocketing' sensationalize statistics. Counting accommodation letters inflates prevalence because each student generates letters for multiple courses. A better metric is representation of disabled students within institutions, as reflected in National Center for Educational Statistics data.

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