A surge in the use of disability accommodations, especially extra time on exams, is reigniting debates about fairness in higher education. Taking exams used to be straightforward. Today, professors must navigate a complex system of accommodations for disabled students, which can include extra time, a distraction-free environment, or the use of technology normally prohibited during exams.
Over the past decade, the number of students qualifying for these accommodations has skyrocketed. At the University of Chicago, the figure has more than tripled in eight years; at UC Berkeley, it has nearly quintupled in 15 years. At Amherst College, 34 percent of undergraduates are registered as disabled while at Harvard and Brown, the figure surpasses 20 percent.
Several factors explain this surge. The 2008 amendments to the Americans with Disabilities Act expanded coverage to include impairments affecting learning, reading, concentrating, and thinking. The DSM-5 lowered the bar for ADHD diagnoses, requiring only that symptoms interfere with academic functioning rather than cause significant impairment. Rising diagnoses of anxiety and depression have led to more students seeking accommodations such as extensions, recording lectures, or permission to miss class.
In response to the 2008 amendments, AHEAD, (the Association on Higher Education and Disability), an organization of disability-services staff, issued guidance encouraging universities to give more weight to a student’s own account of how their disability affected them, rather than relying solely on a medical diagnosis. “Requiring extensive medical and scientific evidence,” AHEAD wrote, “perpetuates a deviance model of disability, undervalues the individual’s history and experience with disability, and is inappropriate and burdensome under the revised statute and regulations.”
Wealth also plays a role, as wealthy families are better positioned to secure evaluations that can cost thousands of dollars, while students from lower-income families often struggle to access the same support.
The most contentious accommodation is extra time on exams. For students with learning disabilities, it can be essential. Rose Horowitch who wrote an article entitled “Accommodation Nation” argues that research shows that extra time also gives an advantage to nondisabled students.
Horowitch raises uncomfortable questions: are accommodations leveling the playing field, or tilting it further in favor of the privileged? Some professors argue that grades should reflect not just knowledge but the ability to perform under time constraints-a skill relevant to real-world problem-solving. Others worry that the system incentivizes students to seek diagnoses they may not truly need, turning accommodations into a competitive edge.
Justin Noia, a visiting professor at Providence College in Rhode Island, believes that disability-related accommodations are undermining the quality of disabled students’ education. In an essay published last year, Noia recalls one student who used a memory aid in an exam because it was allowed as part of accommodations. Noia believed that this accommodation made the student’s grade “a lie” since the grade would no longer reflect the student’s actual mastery of the material.
Requests for accommodations are increasing steadily, Noia says, and while faculty members may disagree over their appropriateness, they grant them – because the law requires them to. Noia adds that most faculty members will admit in private that there are disabilities that cannot be accommodated, such as those that impair cognitive development, memory, or an individual’s ability to participate meaningfully in a classroom.
In college, students seeking accommodations have to submit paperwork to their college’s office of disability services. The whole process is often long, bureaucratic, and not everyone who needs accommodations gets them. I have definitely struggled with this.
Over the past seven years, across two colleges, I’ve had to fight for appropriate accommodations. However, even after being approved, it has taken weeks for my accommodations to be implemented, requiring multiple emails, forms, and phone calls. It should not be that difficult. The very system designed to ensure equity can itself become a barrier, leaving students waiting while their academic performance suffers.
Most recently, I’ve struggled at my local community college. I was told that peer note takers were not available for remote learning. This did not make sense to me. I then showed my accommodation agreement to three other people, all of whom agreed with me.
Subsequently, I was told by the former director of the disability services office that I had “misinterpreted” my accommodations agreement. The former provost even suggested that I transfer to another college after I expressed my frustrations in an email. Experiences like these highlight how students can be left feeling dismissed or even pushed out when they advocate for their rights.
Cases of abuse are not hypothetical. The Varsity Blues admissions scandal revealed that some wealthy parents were paying doctors for false diagnoses to secure extra time on standardized tests. According to The Atlantic, some students have fabricated a diagnosis in order to receive accommodations.
Hailey Strickler, a senior at the University of Richmond, was diagnosed with ADHD and dyslexia when she was 7 years old. She was embarrassed about her disabilities and wary of getting accommodations, until her sophomore year of college. She was speaking with a friend, who didn’t have a disability but had received extra time. “They were like, ‘If I’m doing that, you should definitely have the disability accommodations,’” Strickler told The Atlantic.
Yet disability advocates caution against focusing too much on fraud. They say that fraud is rare compared with the number of students still denied necessary support. For them, the growing prevalence of accommodations is evidence that the system is finally working to include students who were historically excluded. “I would rather open up access to the five kids who need accommodations but can’t afford documentation, and maybe there’s one person who has paid for an evaluation and they really don’t need it,” Emily Tarconish, a special-education teaching-assistant professor at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, told The Atlantic. “That’s worth it to me.”
When the Varsity Blues scandal happened, I was disappointed to learn that some parents faked disabilities in order for their children to qualify for accommodations on the SATs and ACTs. Accommodations don’t exist for people who don’t need them. For some students, it is hard enough to prove that they even need accommodations to begin with.
In high school, I needed accommodations in order to perform well on exams. People needed to see that I was a capable student. Growing up, I often took tests in a separate area away from my peers. My peers often didn’t think this was fair, but for me, it was the only way to take the test fairly.
The challenge for colleges and universities is to balance accessibility with safeguards against exploitation. However, they must do so without undermining the integrity of academic performance.
Colleges and universities say they grapple with an accommodations boom that blurs the line between equity and advantage. Professors like Justin Noia argue that accommodations threaten to undermine educational standards. However, student experiences, like my own, reflect a different reality: difficulty accessing the support meant to level the playing field.
Sources:
Horowitch, Rose. “Accommodation Nation.” The Atlantic, Atlantic Media Company, 2 Dec. 2025, http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/2026/01/elite-university-student-accommodation/684946/.
Lewandowski, Lawrence, et al. ‘Effects of Extended Time Allotments on Reading Comprehension Performance of College Students with and without Learning Disabilities’. Journal of Psychoeducational Assessment, vol. 31, no. 3, Sage Publications, 2013, pp. 326–336, https://doi.org/10.1177/0734282912462693.
Lombardo, Clare. “Why the College Admissions Scandal Hurts Students with Disabilities.” NPR, NPR, 14 Mar. 2019, http://www.npr.org/2019/03/14/703006521/why-the-college-admissions-scandal-hurts-students-with-disabilities.
Noia, Justin. “Giving Students Accommodations Is a Disservice to Employers.” Times Higher Education (THE), Inflexion Private Equity , 22 Oct. 2024, http://www.timeshighereducation.com/opinion/giving-students-accommodations-disservice-employers.
Taylor, Kate. “Fallout from College Admissions Scandal: Arrests, Damage Control and a Scramble for Answers.” The New York Times, The New York Times Company, 13 Mar. 2019, https://www.nytimes.com/2019/03/13/us/college-admissions-probe.html