SAN FRANCISCO — The number of college students who register as having a disability has increased across the country, rising in tandem with diagnoses of anxiety, depression and ADHD among young people since the COVID-19 pandemic.
Nowhere has that trend been more pronounced — or debated — than at Stanford University.
Aside from schools specifically for students with disabilities, Stanford reports the highest percentage of students with disabilities of all post-secondary institutions in the United States, according to a Chronicle analysis of government data: 38% of roughly 7,800 undergraduates in fall 2023 were registered with Stanford’s Office of Accessible Education, according to the latest available data. That puts Stanford well above both the national median of 5.3% and the California median of 4%.
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While some see Stanford’s high proportion of students with disabilities as a sign of the school’s commitment to meeting all students’ needs, critics say it reveals a culture of high-achieving students taking advantage of the school’s offerings to secure better rooms and more time on tests. A Stanford spokesperson said the high figure also reflects variability in how schools report disabilities, and that the school plans to change its reporting in the future.
The Chronicle analyzed survey data from the Integrated Postsecondary Education Data System, also known as IPEDS. Colleges and universities must regularly complete these surveys — which cover a range of topics, including physical, mental and learning disabilities — in order to receive certain kinds of federal aid. The latest available data is from the 2024-2025 survey, which provides preliminary data about students in fall 2023.
The survey question asks the percentage of undergraduates “who were formally registered as students with disabilities with the institution’s office of disability services.” But that definition varies widely from school to school, depending on their registration processes and accommodations on offer.
At Stanford, disability accommodations range from notetaking help and extra test-taking time to reduced courseloads and a priority housing process. The number of students eligible for these resources nearly tripled in the last decade, straining the school’s housing and academic infrastructure.
Human biology professor Paul Fisher estimates that about a quarter of the students in one of his 150-seat lectures at Stanford receive some test-taking accommodation, which can take the form of extra time or a distraction-free room. If the trend continues in this direction, he estimates that Stanford will have to rethink basic elements of campus life.
“Where do we put all these people? We want everyone to show their talent, but this is a reality,” Fisher said. “How are we going to pull it off?”
The reason for Stanford’s outlier status depends on who you ask. It’s not the only selective California school with a high share of students with disabilities — Pitzer College, Pomona College and Scripps College all report that more than 20% of their undergraduates are registered with campus disability offices. Fisher suggested that Stanford, in particular, has “historically taken an interest in serving a really broad range of students,” including those who experience mental or physical illness.
“I understand equity — that’s an important thing,” Fisher said. “But I worry that everyone’s starting to look over their shoulders: ‘Well, if they have … an exception, I should have one too.’ I don’t think that’s a conscious gaming of the system.”
Others have argued that Stanford’s accommodations are so accessible that they invite students to exploit the system. Junior Elsa Johnson helped bring attention to this idea, writing in a Times of London essay last month that it had been “very easy” to leverage her endometriosis diagnosis to secure a single room, extra absences and a blanket tardiness allowance. Around her, Johnson argued, other students were using their accommodations to get ahead in the race for higher grades and nicer rooms.
“If you’re one of these striver-optimizer types, it would be so easy to just put on a sad face and make some claim that you’re really suffering,” Johnson told the Chronicle. “All of us had to do everything we could in high school to try to get here. Why would that stop, especially when it comes to something like housing?”
At Stanford, where about 97% of undergraduates live on campus, housing is so competitive that an illicit marketplace called “Swapford” emerged two years ago for students to trade rooms “for thousands of dollars,” according to the Stanford Daily.
The scarcity makes housing accommodations — which allow students with certain disabilities to secure housing in an earlier round than their peers — especially valuable, Johnson said. In early March, Stanford tweaked its housing process to prevent students with disability accommodations from extending their priority to roommates without disabilities.
Emily Ocasio, a Stanford junior who has severe food allergies and chronic conditions that impact her heartrate, mobility and sleep, said she is reluctant to judge whether other students in the disability housing pool actually need their accommodations. That’s because she’s “confident” other students assume she doesn’t need hers, even though the level of Stanford’s accessibility offerings was key to her decision to matriculate.
Ocasio said she used to brush off questions about her housing and academic accommodations, even joking about “scamming” Stanford’s disability office.
“When people said, ‘How did you get your great room?’ I would say, ‘Oh, like, the OAE helped me out,” Ocasio said. “That’s not a lie. But I did not want to have to go on trial, every time I was asked how I got a good room, telling about the ins and outs of my most personal medical details.”
Ocasio noted that the disability percentage Stanford reports might also include a broader category of accommodations than other colleges.
Stanford spokesperson Angie Thomas agreed. She said the IPEDS survey question was “vague,” leaving institutions to “define for themselves what constitutes being registered with the disability office.”
“Several recent inquiries we have received on this issue have prompted us to take a deeper look at how Stanford has been reporting data on student accommodations,” Thomas said. “We have determined that our previous practice did not accurately reflect the number of students who are actually receiving accommodations, and we plan to correct this in our IPEDS reporting moving forward.”
Traditionally, all Stanford students who completed an intake form with the on-campus disability office were reported on the survey — including those who had temporary conditions or were never actually granted accommodations. An otherwise able-bodied student could have broken their ankle skiing during their first winter at Stanford, for example, and still be designated as having a disability by their senior year.
Starting this spring, the university plans to report only the number of undergraduates who are granted accommodations, a process which involves meeting with a disability advisor, communication with professors and a review of their documentation. The change would cut the reported percentage of Stanford undergraduates with disabilities in fall 2025 from 33.5% to 12.5%, Thomas said.
Scripps, which reports the sixth-highest proportion of students with disabilities in the nation, has continued to include students who request accommodations in its count. Changing that metric could make it harder for Scripps to track how trends have evolved at the college over time, said Director of Assessment and Institutional Research Eulena Jonsson.
“The comparison to another school doesn’t really help us or our students as much,” Jonsson said. “In terms of the students themselves and making sure they stay and they feel they have a good experience, whether in the dorms or in the classroom — it’s definitely looking at that trend over time.”
Stanford’s change would put its reporting process in line with other California colleges, including UC Berkeley. But even at Berkeley, where about 13% of students were registered as having a disability in the latest IPEDS survey, the impact of increasing accommodations on the classroom has been similar, according to education professor Frank Worrell.
Increasingly, Worrell’s students “meet the criteria for, but not the spirit of the diagnosis,” he said. While many were able to receive straight As throughout high school without accommodations, when they get to Berkeley, where their classes are harder, students feel the need for extra time on tests and assignments more acutely, he said.
Worrell’s skepticism has created some awkward dynamics with students as the number receiving accommodations has increased, rising 44% between 2020 and 2025.
“I had this really not difficult assignment that was due,” Worrell said. “On Sunday evening, I’m prepping for class, and I get an email from the student saying, ‘I’m pulling out my diagnosis.’” He told the student they would fail the assignment if they turned it in late. The student raised the issue to college administrators, who Worrell said ultimately sided with him.
But because every assignment can’t be litigated like this, Worrell predicts that colleges will eventually overhaul their policies. He envisions tests where the material is more difficult but every student has the maximum amount of time. That way, Worrell said, “the accommodation is built in” and advantages are more balanced.
The debate over disability accommodations has put the students who rely on them in the crosshairs. Stanford senior Antonio Milane has cerebral palsy and was initially told that Stanford would not be able to provide him with a notetaking scribe. A petition about his dilemma garnered more than 74,000 signatures.
Perhaps because of that campaign, Milane has found Stanford attentive to his needs ever since he arrived on campus — he’s guaranteed a single room and extra time on tests and homework. Now, when he’s met with resistance, it’s from his peers.
When housing assignments come out, Milane hears people complain about students with accommodations “taking all the rooms.” When he’s told his classmates about doing well on a test, he said some have told him it was only because he had extra time.
“It makes me mad,” Milane said. “There’s a lot of people who have disabilities and they’re afraid to accept accommodations — to present as a weakness, or like they’re taking advantage of the system.”
If there are students trying to use Stanford’s accommodations system to their advantage, it’s not always working. Johnson, who wrote the Times of London essay, had hoped to live in one of Stanford’s coveted co-op houses, which she said are more spacious and often have their own chef. In the end, she was placed in a shared two-room suite in a transfer dorm.
“It’s nice that I sort of have my own room,” she said. “But it wasn’t worth it.”
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