Accessibility in higher education needs to be considered from every angle.
Now, more than ever, accommodations are showing up in the post-secondary classroom. 12 per cent of post-secondary students in Ontario are registered with their disability offices, and as many as one in four students at Queen’s receive extra time on tests. Most students receiving accommodations are in the highest income brackets, reflecting a need for broader institutional change, not just extra time on tests.
As Rose Horowitch wrote in an article for The Atlantic titled ‘Accommodation Nation,’ U.S. universities have an “extra time on tests problem.” While mental health and learning disability diagnoses have risen across the U.S., the effect is primarily in the top income bracket at elite institutions.
According to Horowitch, Harvard, Brown, and Amherst College reported the number of students receiving testing accommodations more than doubling in the last decade, reaching up to 35 per cent. Meanwhile, community college students receiving accommodations remained flat at three to four per cent. 10 to 20 per cent of Ivey League students are in the top one per cent of earners in the U.S., while community colleges primarily serve lower to middle income students.
It’s not students who need it the most who’re getting accommodations, it’s those who can afford a diagnosis.
In Ontario, the number of students registered for accommodations due to non-physical disabilities has grown rapidly, from five per cent in 2008 to 31 per cent in 2022. While some of this growth likely has to do with a greater awareness and understanding of disabilities, another concern should be who is receiving accommodations, and why.
At Queen’s, students are only able to receive accommodations when they’ve submitted documentation confirming their disability. For students from rural communities that face long wait times for basic healthcare, documentation is twice as challenging to obtain. The Queen’s Psychology Clinic, which can provide affordable neuropsychological assessments, has closed their waitlist, and isn’t accepting referrals.
Among the most common diagnosis receiving accommodations are Attention Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD), anxiety, and depression. The problem with these three conditions is twofold; while some populations are underdiagnosed, others are severely overdiagnosed.
In a study out of North York General Hospital and the Hospital for Sick Children, increased awareness and social media content can sometimes cause normal, temporary, or stress induced behaviours to be mistakenly diagnosed as anxiety, depression or ADHD. While awareness of mental illness grows, so does pathologization, self-diagnosis, and in some cases, fraudulent activity involving ADHD medications such as Adderall, Vyvanse, and Ritalin.
Of course, overdiagnosis is only a concern for those who can access a diagnosis in the first place, while many Canadians still face barriers to proper care and specialist assessment.
Meanwhile, professors are struggling to adjust to the uptick in students requiring accommodations. Queen’s professor Thomas Abrams told The Globe and Mail that e-mail correspondence for accommodations requests can take multiple hours per test or assignment.
The burden of accommodations places additional strain on an already underfunded post-secondary system.
Disability accommodations are a complex pedagogical, human rights, labour, and privacy question, and should be treated as such. Accommodations are more than just allowing some extra time on tests and must be critically examined and properly implemented. If universities want to take accessibility seriously, they must look beyond quick fixes and consider long-term institutional change. There needs to be a greater investment in access to diagnoses, mental health information, and expanded accommodations outside of just extra time on tests.
Cloey is a fourth-year Politics, Philosophy and Economics student, and The Journal’s Editorials and Features Editor.
Tags
Accessibility, Accommodations, Education
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