“Accommodation Nation” in the UNC System

Late last year, the Atlantic’s Rose Horowitch penned a widely shared essay on campus “disability accommodations,” the practice whereby students with learning disorders such as ADHD receive extra time on tests or the use of “otherwise-prohibited technology.” The piece did not make for pleasant reading.

Among Horowitch’s findings was that, because universities have made “the process of getting accommodations easier,” the share of students who qualify “has grown at a breathtaking pace.” At the University of Chicago, for instance, “the number has more than tripled over the past eight years.” At Amherst, a stunning 34 percent of undergraduates were formally registered as disabled in fall 2023.

A glance at UNC System disability figures reveals a steady upward creep that is cause for concern if not outright dismay. Disability percentages in the UNC System are nowhere near that high. Nevertheless, a glance at figures provided by the institutions reveals a steady upward creep that is cause for concern if not outright dismay. Moreover, a number of UNC System schools that maintained modest disability percentages until recently have experienced sudden, massive jumps in the last few years. While these phenomena may be entirely innocent, they are highly suggestive of loosening assessment standards in disability-services offices, where a larger “case load” inevitably means more funding, higher staffing levels, and greater prestige on campus.

Figure 1, below, indicates the percentage of undergraduates registered as “students with disabilities” at UNC System institutions. The table is sortable by academic year. Although our analysis goes back only as far as 2017-18 (thus providing a pre-Covid baseline), it clearly reveals the direction in which more than half of the System’s schools are trending.

A few observations present themselves right away. UNC Asheville has had the highest average percentage of “disabled” undergraduates (10.31) since 2017-18—due, in large part, to its startling 2023-24 percentage of 14.56. (The current academic year’s data are not yet available.) UNCA has additionally led the UNC System in disabled-student percentage every year since 2018-19.

UNC-Chapel Hill’s percentage has been moving steadily upward for the last five years, going from “three percent or less” in 2018-19 to a discouraging 10.52 percent last academic year.

Disability figures at all of the schools just mentioned are on clear upward trajectories. Although more compressed, NC Central’s percentage increase has been equally noteworthy. The historically black university (HBCU) held steady at “three percent or less” from 2017 through 2021 before leaping to 10 percent and 11.52 percent, respectively, in 2022-23 and 2023-24.

Similarly, fellow HBCU Winston-Salem State University was at “three percent or less” every year under consideration except the most recent one, rising to 12 percent in 2023-24.

All of the schools just mentioned, as well as UNC Wilmington, Western Carolina University, and App State, are on clear upward trajectories. So, less pronouncedly, is UNC Greensboro following a welcome three-year dip.

In general, and perhaps surprisingly, there is little correlation between a UNC System institution’s average cost of attendance and its percentage of undergraduates with disabilities. (See Figure 2, below, also sortable by category.) This would seem to eliminate the possibility—raised in the Atlantic’s coverage—that many student “disabilities” are the over-diagnosed “problems” of the well-to-do.

Yes, Elizabeth City State University is both the cheapest UNC System school and the least disabled, but a similar correlation doesn’t hold on the high end. The most expensive UNC System school, UNC Wilmington, is in the middle of the pack where average disability percentage is concerned. So is UNC-Chapel Hill, the institution with the wealthiest student body. UNC Asheville, the clear disability “leader,” is only the sixth most expensive UNC System university.

Nor do a UNC System institution’s disability figures appear to be related to the percentage of undergraduates who self-identify as white (another theory) or female (yet another). The whitest school in the UNC System, UNC Wilmington, is, as mentioned, in no way a disability overachiever. The most female, Winston-Salem State University, is nearer to the bottom of the disability rankings than the top.

The Left’s solution to vogue “disabilities” is to erect and make use of a vast bureaucratic system of preferences and special favors. Intriguingly, where UNC Asheville does lead the way is in “sustainability.” The institution is the only UNC System school ranked in the Princeton Review’s “Top 50 Green Colleges,” where it sits at number 12. Pair that with UNCA’s unique liberal-arts identity and one begins to imagine a connection. Crunchy granola types love Asheville. Perhaps they also love declaring themselves disabled (i.e., special), a proclivity that might explain why the theatre kids at UNC School of the Arts have maintained the second-highest disability average over the last seven years.

Of course Bill and Sue and Jayden and Cayden all want extra time on tests, and of course the adults in the room want to give it to them. Indeed, UNC Asheville and UNC School of the Arts are the only institutions in the UNC System granted a “very liberal” rating by the college-information site Niche.com. Now we are getting somewhere. Whereas the conservative response to vogue “disabilities” is to rub some dirt on it, the Left’s solution is to erect and make use of a vast bureaucratic system of preferences and special favors. This ideological dichotomy may not hold perfectly, but it goes a long way toward explaining some of the higher numbers in the UNC System these past several years.

Broadly speaking, there are two ways to understand the recent explosion in disabled-student percentages. In the Left’s telling, significant portions of student bodies have always struggled with learning disabilities. Today’s students are merely the first generation to receive the diagnoses and treatments they deserve.

The Right’s narrative is, unsurprisingly, somewhat sterner. The collapse of self-reliance in post-New Deal America is now colliding with the fetishization of oppression long stirring on college campuses. Throw in a muscular “mental health” movement, and one has a recipe for widespread diagnostic overreaction. Of course Bill and Sue and Jayden and Cayden all want extra time on tests, and of course the adults in the room want to give it to them. As George Will famously said, “when [we] make victimhood a coveted status that confers privileges, victims proliferate.”

Which of these answers one believes depends, of course, on one’s ideological priors. But consider the following paragraph from Horowitch’s essay:

A 2013 analysis of disability offices at 200 postsecondary institutions found that most “required little” from a student besides a doctor’s note in order to grant accommodations for ADHD. At the same time, getting such a note became easier. In 2013, the American Psychiatric Association expanded the definition of ADHD. Previously, the threshold for diagnosis had been “clear evidence of clinically significant impairment.” After the release of the DSM‑5, the symptoms needed only to “interfere with, or reduce the quality” of, academic functioning.

We have no way of knowing whether and to what extent loosening diagnostic criteria are driving the numbers in the UNC System. Nor can we be sure that disability-services offices have begun to err on the side of over-generosity, however reasonable that theory is. Finally, as an East Carolina University representative told the Martin Center, “there are a vast range of accommodations included in [our] number for students who have a documented disability.” Not every student in question receives classroom advantages.

All true. Yet it is difficult to browse the UNC System’s numbers without a shudder for the rising generation. More and more, we are declaring our students unfit to play by long-established academic rules. For our future and theirs, that can’t possibly be good.

Graham Hillard is editor at the James G. Martin Center for Academic Renewal.