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Cheaters Faking Disabilities Are Dragging Colleges Into Crisis
A large proportion of college students, law students, and medical students are willfully cheating and lying to get better grades. Nowhere is this happening more than at elite universities, where there is exponential growth in the number of students claiming disabilities in order to get the “accommodation” of time and a half on their exams.
Nationwide, 20 percent of college students now claim to have a disability. That number has quintupled over the past decade. Of course, there is no plausible scenario in which the number of disabilities among young people would actually increase fivefold (unless a city were carpet-bombed), so this must be a trend with a purpose. Plus, the more elite the school, the higher the rate of “disability,” even though one would think debilitating cognitive and learning disabilities would make attendance at such schools less likely. At Stanford University, for instance, 38 percent of undergrads are officially registered as being disabled. Certain populations also have extremely high rates of diagnosed disability. For example, 54 percent of nonbinary students at American colleges today are registered as having a disability. (RELATED: The Outrageous Scandal That Should Be Rocking Higher Education)
[M]ost of these “disabled” students are liars and cheaters who know they have no actual impediment that prevents them from taking an exam within an allotted timeframe.
Many assessments in the mainstream media on the surge of “accommodations” speak in gentle tones about whether additional safeguards are needed and whether the system has become “unfair.” But make no mistake about it, most of these “disabled” students are liars and cheaters who know they have no actual impediment that prevents them from taking an exam within an allotted timeframe. (RELATED: America’s Universities: A Multi-Generational Perspective)
Their decision to take extra time on their exams — which has been shown by several studies to significantly increase the likelihood of a better grade — is a purposeful act to hurt their classmates in favor of advantaging themselves. It is wrong. Even if they have genuinely fallen for the claim that anxiety and “ADHD” entitle elite college, law, or medical students to 150 percent time on exams, they’re guilty because they know that they are perfectly capable of reading the exam and giving an answer, and that a lower score is the result of low effort and/or low intelligence. After all, half of these students had no disability until after they showed up at their university. (RELATED: Higher Education’s Triple Crisis: Finances, Integrity, Leadership)
The time and a half given to students with “disabilities” is certainly not leveling the playing field. Several studies have found that giving students extra time has about the same effect on increasing scores for students with and without disabilities. Those benefits to students with “disabilities” can be seen in the rise in LSAT scores in recent years, which can be attributed to the increased rates of test-takers receiving time and a half. Conveniently, these “disabled” test-takers who get time and a half on the LSAT do, on average, better than their non-disabled peers.
These “disabled” students do serious harm to students who are actually disabled. College students who are blind, paralyzed, missing limbs, have cerebral palsy, have severe dyslexia, are recovering from surgery, etc., etc. actually need accommodations. Students with fake disabilities who monopolize the resources of accommodations testing offices for the purpose of cheating steal resources from students who genuinely need them. Plus, they cast suspicion on the students who need accommodations by means of promoting widespread resentment toward accommodations.
This month, the Atlantic published an essay on this growing phenomenon. The author, Rose Horowitch, argued that the explosion of accommodations in higher education “has put the entire idea of fairness at risk.” She traced the origin of this explosion in accommodation grants back to a 2008 amendment from the Association on Higher Education and Disability that called for colleges to give significant consideration to students’ own assessment of their disability and not to rely only on medical diagnoses. The organization claimed that “(r)equiring extensive medical and scientific evidence” actually “perpetuates a deviance model of disability.” In addition, the American Psychiatric Association in 2013 expanded the definition of ADHD — the “disability” that 17 percent of college students claim to have — to the amorphous standard that a person’s symptoms need only to “interfere with, or reduce the quality” of academic functioning.
Horowitch doesn’t say this, but ADHD is a diagnosis that is made to account for totally disparate behaviors in people. For example, one person with “ADHD” could be a 21-year-old woman who gets distracted by TikTok when she’s supposed to be studying, and another person with “ADHD” could be a 11-year-old boy who has intense anger and is willfully disobedient toward all adults. In other words, ADHD can be applied to people who aren’t the best at staying focused (a difficult task for almost everyone, it turns out), and it can describe people with a range of other serious mental disorders. Brain scans of those with an “ADHD” diagnosis have found nothing in common among those with the condition that is distinct from the rest of the population. Brain scans have also found nothing consistently deficient in the brains of people with ADHD. Therefore, a diagnosis of ADHD means and describes practically nothing coherent. And yet, there are many ADHD activists who claim that there is something wrong with the brain chemistry of people who have ADHD, and that this can only be solved by stimulants that are controlled substances. (These activists still haven’t shown what is wrong with the brain chemistry of people with ADHD, or demonstrated that the stimulants have positive effects in the long term.)
Even though ADHD means so little and has such a low standard for diagnosis, many psychiatrists have been known to diagnose patients with it even when the basic standards are not met. In a survey, nearly half of psychologists said the purpose of a psychoeducational assessment was to secure accommodations for a student rather than to discover if the student is in need of them. Others advertise that they will provide a diagnosis for accommodations. One assessment company, for instance, publicly bragged that it had a “95 percent success rate in getting learning disability accommodations.” The company’s owner even said in a YouTube video that he wasn’t aware of a case in which a client had been denied accommodations. A different cognitive testing company had a banner on its website that said “Get ACT Extra Time.”
Thus, it’s become easy for parents to essentially buy their kid a diagnosis that will unlock time and a half on his or her exams. Another piece of evidence for this is the fact that disability accommodations are given more frequently at schools with students from wealthier families.
But really, parents don’t even need to buy their kids a diagnosis. In a recent study in Canada, 23 universities approved a (fictional) student’s request for extra time on her exams because of ADHD. Here’s the twist: The official neuropsychological battery, which was given to the universities, stated that she was within normal range for everything. All she had to do to get accommodations was state that she felt she had ADHD. The researcher, Allyson G. Harrison, reported that she was inspired to do the study by a similar study that was conducted in the U.S. that also “found almost perfect compliance” with the student’s request. The researcher refused to publish that study, she said, because he feared institutional backlash.
Increasingly, diagnoses of anxiety and/or depression are accounting for a greater proportion of students who receive extra time on their exams. At Ohio State, students with these mental health difficulties constitute 36 percent of those receiving accommodations. These students also tend to receive leniencies, such as being able to skip class or turn in assignments late.
Of course, it seems quite clear that teenagers with anxiety and depression would be better off being held to the same standard as their peers instead of being coddled into feelings of helplessness and insufficiency. Having depression and anxiety might mean you need help and therapy, but it certainly doesn’t make you too stupid to take your exam in the normal amount of time.
Also, about this time and a half for exams. There’s no scientific rationale for it. Harrison explained to the Chronicle on Higher Education that there’s no significant research on what extra time might be appropriate for certain disabilities. “It’s just throwing darts,” she said. Students in Australia with disabilities, for instance, only receive 115 percent time for exams.
In recent years, many employers have reported that college graduates are unprepared for the workforce. Of course, getting concessions and easier exams for claiming to have the “disability” of “ADHD” at a time when rigor in higher education is falling each year is hardly the best preparation for the workplace. After all, you don’t get time and a half to do your job.
In 2023, Brett Seaton, then a student at the University of Pennsylvania who was diagnosed with ADHD but refused to accept accommodations, wrote about what exactly is supposed to happen when these coddled students show up at their place of work post-graduation and aren’t given concessions. He said:
Employers trust Penn to educate students and to prepare them to enter the workforce. Imagine how surprised they will be when they find out that in time-sensitive situations, accommodated students function at half of the processing speeds of non-accommodated students. Accommodated students will feel slow and behind, while employers will be frustrated and more likely to fire them for their slow rate of creating value.
What will be much worse is when doctors who received time and a half on their exams start treating patients. Unfortunately, doctors with “ADHD” will also not receive time and a half to help a patient in a medical emergency.
By choosing to give so many students such unwarranted benefits, universities are putting their reputations at serious risk. Students are graduating from their schools entitled and unprepared. Genuine merit is overshadowed by those who game the system. And, as most college courses are graded on a curve, either officially or unofficially, each student who is not cheating is being robbed of the grades he or she deserves. Universities’ entire system of academic integrity has collapsed, and the value of their degrees has fallen.
Surely, these schools are terrified of getting sued by students who claim their disabilities were not accommodated. But there is no reason that time and a half on an exam should be a “reasonable” accommodation for ADHD, depression, or anxiety. Universities need to fight back against the liars and the cheaters.
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