Yes, College Students Are Faking Disabilities for Academic Advantages

Are college students faking disabilities?

I talked about this in my last video, and the very idea that some people might be pretending to have disabilities when they really don't seems to be very offensive to people, that I would even suggest that and say that there are people who are faking.

And I think we've got to think about why that's an offensive idea to people.

Now, I think it's offensive that people do fake disabilities and do claim accommodations that they don't need and that they aren't entitled to.

And a big part of the reason is that some of those accommodations are inherently scarce, right?

Like if you're a teacher and you have students who have accommodations like needs to sit on the front row.

Well, there are only so many seats on the front row.

You can't sit the entire class on the front row.

So getting an accommodation you don't need prevents someone else from getting an accommodation they do need.

So liars and fakers are a real problem if this is occurring.

Now, some people would like us to believe that it's not actually occurring or that it's so rare that it's not even worth thinking about.

But if you look at the spikes, if you look at the increases, it doesn't make any sense to say that 100% of these people are telling the truth.

And if you look at the incentives that are in place for people to get accommodations that will improve their grades, that will improve their LSAT scores, that will improve their prospects in some way, it's not that much of a leap of the imagination to say, okay, I can see why rationally some people would want to fake a disability.

To me, the clearest cut evidence that this is happening is the existence of these boutique psychologists.

And a lot of people don't understand the way that money talks.

In the Varsity Blues scandal of a couple years ago where a lot of celebrities were implicated in cheating to get their kids into the best colleges, one of the techniques that they used to cheat was to get fake diagnoses from psychologists.

And just about anybody with enough money can get this done.

There are boutique psychologists out there who will screen you for whatever you want to be screened for.

And as long as you pay them, you're going to walk away with a diagnosis that you are happy with.

And in some cases they say so openly, we have a 95% success rate in obtaining accommodations for our patients.

If you have enough money, you can get a fake disability diagnosis.

And what's doubly offensive about that is that a lot of people who do have disabilities struggle to get the diagnosis that they need, or they've had to pay money that they really can't afford to get the diagnosis to get the accommodations that they need.

And I think all of us should be bothered by the role of money in that process, where we have people who are taking an advantage for themselves, using money to create some sort of academic advantage by fabricating a disability.

I don't understand why people would be upset at that accusation rather than at the reality, unless the reality is not occurring, right?

Because if you are a person with a disability, maybe you're not directly affected by all of this, but the net result of fakers and people getting accommodations that they don't need has to be negative, has to be bad for people who do have disabilities.

So as much as I would like to believe that nobody would do such a thing, nobody would fake a disability, There is too much evidence out there that this is happening, that people are using money, using accommodations to gain some sort of unfair advantage for themselves.

If you're offended by that, I am too, but I am not willing to ignore the evidence that it is taking place.

Let me know what you're seeing and what you're hearing on this front.