Some of that is probably because students at elite universities come from families who understand exactly how to navigate meritocratic systems. Parents who know you need a tutor to ace the ACT and an essay editor to polish your application essays likely also understand that, in some situations, you should get a psychiatric evaluation and disclose any diagnoses so you can receive accommodations.
I'm fairly convinced a big part of clearing the barrier to entry of these elite institutions is having a deep understanding of exactly the things you need to do to succeed given the structure of the system and the nature of the competition. Students at "non-elite" institutions are more likely to come from backgrounds where even if you DO have a disability, maybe nobody ever tells you that you can go to the doctor for it, or that something like "accommodations" exist to help you.
While getting help for a legitimate disability is worthwhile and also something more likely to happen in a wealthy family, that is most certainly not what is happening here. These people game the system, get prescriptions for Adderall whether they need it or not, and get extra time on everything. I saw it a little bit when I was at a "non-elite" university. Dealing with "elite" alumni confirms this outlook too.
The last time this came up I visited some of the subreddits for universities, most of which had threads discussing this. The discussions there shed more light on the motivations than some of these articles do.
- At some universities, registering as having certain disabilities gives students priority access in the housing queue, so anyone who isn't registered with the disability office gets to choose after those who are.
- Certain disabilities qualified people for a lottery for single dorm rooms. They have a limited number of single rooms for students with disabilities, so now that 30-40% of the student body is registering for them it's just another lottery.
- Some universities allow students to record lectures only if they're registered with the disability office. If you're not, you can't record.
- I remember one comment saying that people were doing it just to get newer dorms with hardwood floors, which were reserved for students with disabilities
- Having certain disabilities qualified people to get out of the required meal plan. So if someone didn't want to buy a meal plan for whatever reason (including to save money) their only option was to claim certain disabilities. At other universities it was enough to claim you were following a Jain diet which objected to root vegetables and other things, which the meal plans couldn't provide for. If you don't claim a disability or Jain, you have to buy the meal plan.
Adding to this: Even back when I was in college (not that long ago) it became known that registering as having ADHD qualified you for extra time on exams. A lot of parents were pushing their kids to get registered as ADHD purely for academic advantage. A few people I knew did it and were blown away at how easy it was to get a diagnosis (they just memorized the ADHD inventory questions and went to the laziest doctor they could find) and then walk that down to the disability office and suddenly they were exempt from a lot of the test taking requirements every else had. I remember someone bragging that they got to take their tests in a special location with proctors that had to be scheduled later, so they were taking every test a day or two after everyone else. They used that time to quiz all of their friends on the test content. I doubt (or hope) this level of manipulation is still common though.
>Adding to this: Even back when I was in college (not that long ago) it became known that registering as having ADHD qualified you for extra time on exams.
In sixth grade I was frustrated focusing on exams because I'm easily irritated by noise (misophonia). So, I asked for a separate room, or, as I remember putting it, a closet. They sent me to a different room and offered me four hours. I couldn't seem to explain that I don't need more time, I just want it to be quiet. I never asked again.
I don't know how much this plays a role, and this is anecdotal, but I feel like the last 5-10 years or so, folks have put increasing stock in being (or being portrayed as) a victim.
A hobby growing in popularity seems to be perusing the internet on the lookout for something to be "outraged" by, no matter how mundane.
As someone who played hockey for years, this always felt like such a contrast from my experience where the norm was to conceal an injury and power through so you could keep playing.
If you were bleeding and unphased, you were the envy of your teammates. If a guy was limping off the ice after blocking a shot, you did not want to see the bruise he had underneath.
What I will be interested in seeing is, as students graduate into the job market, how the feigning victimhood approach fits into getting a well paying job. For all I know, it may pay off. Only time will tell I guess.
You can get all sorts of extra accommodations at school and work now if you're diagnosed with a disability. Disability rates have thus exploded. I support giving reasonable accommodations to people who are truly disabled but we have medicalized a lot of minor stuff that people ought to just "power through".
There are only two ways to give everyone a private dorm room:
1. Drastically reduce admissions until a 1:1 ratio of rooms to students is achieved. Once rooms are full, you have to reject students. Overall college admissions is cut significantly.
2. Massively increase tuitions so that more single-occupancy rooms can be built
So which one do you choose? I suspect most of these proposals rely on a world where money is infinite and nothing has to be sacrificed to get there.
Umm.. these elite universities are sitting on tens of billions of dollars in endowment funds. They can easily build dorm rooms if they care to - especially given the universities already own the land and have vast amounts of unused land.
"Grievance culture," I believe, is the term you are looking for.
Most of the power in that came from classes of victims being untouchable. Some of that was the decorum of not wanting to punch down. Some was the reasonable ask that people realize they had advantages others didn't have.
All of it was completely unprepared for being gamed and infiltrated by bad faith actors.
> I feel like the last 5-10 years or so, folks have put increasing stock in being (or being portrayed as) a victim.
I've actually noticed the same pattern where I live in Europe. Some young adults go to great lengths to find a psychiatrist that will diagnose them something. I heard than on multiple occasions, reported by doctors themselves, and anecdotal evidence.
To be honest, I don't know how much this is a reality, and how much of it is an old man rant :)
I imagine most people are secretly turned off by the victim card (for the same reason you’d avoid someone who always has a “woe is me” story) but who knows how that affects the job market when virtue signaling is so powerful.
People don't hunt down outrage posts, they are delivered to them by algorithms seeking maximum engagement. The solution is nothing less than to outlaw recommendation algorithms.
1000% agree recommendation algorithms should not be allowed. Sorting and user criteria, great. But nothing should be pushed without clear acknowledgement of the user. Anything software recommends should be specified by the user.
Obvious counter-move for the elite universities: Detail every student's disabilities & accommodations on their transcripts, to assist potential employers and graduate schools in anticipating their special needs.
Documenting the disabilities seems ethically dubious (and perhaps legally dicey -- not sure if HIPAA applies here); wouldn't it be sufficient to document just the accomodations? Those are what should be relevant to employers and grad schools, after all.
This is something else. We used to prize resilience and toughness, especially in the face of adversity. Now we're given rewards for whining the loudest - and this is the anticipated outcome.
> We've had shameless leaders for many generations
The magnitude is different. Bovino and Miller act above the law. And the corruption and graft among some cabinet members is off the charts. (This following a Presidency where the preëmptive pardon was pioneered for family members.)
Need to preface that I’m not innocent of this at all, my primary source is my own experience: but I genuinely believe our approach to attention disorders - especially stimulant prescriptions and academic accommodations - will be widely ridiculed within the next 50 years. In a similar manner to how we think about smoking on airplanes in 80s.
Not trying to be dismissive or reductive, but when 15-50% of honors students at elite universities are a part of this it deserves way more scrutiny that it gets. Same is true in a lot of elite private sector spaces.
There have been multiple periods of widespread non-medical stimulant use throughout history. Amphetamine wasn't even a controlled substance in the US until the 70s.
It generally does not translate to widespread social benefit.
I am very aware of the history of amphetamine use in the US. I think widespread access to amphetamines was mostly good (and widespread access to benzos was mostly bad).
"Our constitution was made only for a moral and religious people." -John Adams
if the religious part bothers you, substitute "willing to forgo benefits on principle rather than economic and utilitarian calculation, despite recognizing the prisoners dilemma of doing so"
The context of that quote is interesting. It's a pep talk to the militia. It could be summarized as "Our country is new and so it doesn't suck yet. Go out there and be honorable."
He didn't intend it as political analysis, but it nonetheless makes a fine warning: "But should the People of America, once become capable of that deep simulation towards one another and towards foreign nations [...] this Country will be the most miserable Habitation in the World."
He's pretty clear that this had already affected every other country, and it seems like he expected us to go that way eventually. I don't think any set of laws will govern a people who would rather defeat their opponents than live together.
A religious corollary: "You cannot legislate righteousness", or to your point, "you cannot legislate [willingness to forgo benefits on principle rather than economic and utilitarian calculation, despite recognizing the prisoners dilemma of doing so]"
This shouldn’t be news. I grew up in Texas and most of my high school’s top 8% were cheating to stay ahead. Older siblings handed down tests and kids snuck into classes to steal exams.
At my university most kids I knew cheated. Having done the work honestly - lots of classmates would ask if they could glimpse my answers during exams.
In my naivety I believed that there would be somewhat of a comeuppance but no they’re just as successful (and some even more!) than I. When the outcomes are extreme, people will do anything to stay ahead.
Most Americans are honest hard working people. Don’t be them is the hard lesson I’ve learned.
This is a downstream effect of credentialism. Considering the cognitive decline of the generation soon to enter universities and the work force, it's going to get worse.
Interesting! My experience was the opposite: every instance of cheating I saw turned out bad, save one plane geometry fake construction, and a physical chemistry class where the building janitor potentially stole copies of tests.
Heh, reminds me of 90's Romania when everyone dreamt of "tunuri" (literally "cannons") or "țepe" (literally "stakes") aka cons. Tun being a major con, one that would mean you're set for life and țeapă being any con.
Kids would dream of growing up and "să dea țeapă" (give a stake = pull a con) or "să tragă un tun" (fire a cannon = pull off major con) and then never working for the rest of their lives.
Officially, exam scores are based on knowledge, not ability to think fast enough to solve a problem.
In practice, the easiest lever professors can pull to reduce test scores is to decrease the time limit. Generally, that relatively benefits people that can think, read, and write faster, who happen to be the most knowledgeable.
But now, your exams are a glorified IQ or handwriting speed test.
That's where accomodations fail, because it's a free bonus that helps everyone instead of only benefitting the disabled.
I have a disability where I physically can't handwrite without pain, so I have to type everything. I also chose computer engineering, which requires creating matrices and circuit diagrams.
I physically, no matter how hard I try, draw a circuit diagram in Microsoft Paint as fast as you can draw one with your hand. I can not type and debug Microsoft Word's equation editor's rendering of a matrix faster than a normal person can draw it. So I get more time to do those things.
Generally, in most of my exams, the extra time wouldn't benefit a normal person in my situation. If I do not know the equations for a pn junction I'm not going to magically reinvent the avalanche effect.
In some exams, I can finish early because I deeply know the concepts. But oftentimes I'm spending a third of the exam futzing with the equation editor or using the line tool to get a zigzag trying to meet a deadline.
But the thing is, I also don't attend an elite university. I attended a mid-tier one called Toronto Metropolitan University where most students struggled with the concepts and the professors could test knowledge. Rarely did my peers do practice problems or show up to lectures. Time was almost never a constraint because my professors could differentiate on learning.
At a school like the University of Toronto, almost every student has studied past exams. They attend every lecture session including the ones they're not enrolled in. They learn everything and grind until 11 pm on practice problems.
At that level, it's hard to focus only on teaching new concepts. The few courses that do, like Harvard Math 55, are legendarily difficult for the professors and students. I know because I did really well in Waterloo's version before transferring due to autoimmune disease. Time wasn't an issue since every quiz was 1 question you instantly did or didn't understand. That exam tested for talent.
What's much easier, and what most elite schools do, is jam a ton of questions into every exam and write the IQ test.
It's hard to be fair to everyone. I approve of trying to help the disabled function in society, but ultimately the whole thing is arbitrary. Continued success as someone who is actually disabled depends on everyone being willing to put up with the disability and probably overlook better and more capable candidates to keep it going. That really only makes sense when the number of disabled people is small and they come from meager backgrounds, not when they go to ivy league schools in general...
It's not really an assumption. It's been well known for years that registering with certain disabilities gives students advantages in test taking (longer time, separate exam times), housing selection on campus, ability to record exams, and more.
The assumption being made, and which you're still making here, is the jump from "there are benefits to registering with a disability" -> "differences in registration rates are due to fraud".
Certainly one possible explanation, but "obviously people would abuse that, thus this is abuse" is still an assumption, not an evidenced claim.
I've heard similar theories put forth about amoral wall street bankers. The gist of it was that old-school WASP bankers were relatively trustworthy because most of them believed that God was watching them. They were smart enough to outsmart the law, but not their religious sensibilities. Then amoral papists, Catholics, and whatnot came in and everything went to pot. (Some of the people spouting this theory were explicitly racist on top of it all.)
This theory was mainly used for discrimination, but there might have been a small grain of truth. Some people will do the right thing because they see that society functions only if most people behave in the common interest. Some people only do the right thing because they fear consequences, and fear of God can be good enough for people who are firmly convinced they're too smart to be caught by anyone else. Perhaps a decline in religion has unfettered the inherently amoral. In reality, it may just have been that enough bankers started doing amoral things that the rest decided they had to as well in order to keep up.
We might be seeing something similar in U.S. colleges. Some students have no fear of the consequences of being caught in a lie, and many more are simply reacting to seeing obvious frauds being rewarded with real advantages. Prof's and TA's are probably quite aware of what's going on, but are afraid to call it out. If a prof denies a student's bogus disability entitlements they could be sued or fired.
So, how do you walk this back? Unlike finance scams, it's relatively easy to spot fake disabilities. Universities could do their own assessments instead of relying on whatever outside doctors students can get to say they have a disability. They could strongly support profs who take action against fakers. This may cost them donations from upset parents, but failure to reign the fakery in could tarnish the brand of elite colleges and, eventually, cost them even more. Then again, it may already be the case that an ivy league degree says more about connections than competence.
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Edit:
I just wanted to add that I really dislike the above theory and in no way endorse hiring religious people over non-religious people. In my experience, religious people are every bit as good as rationalizing immoral behaviour as everyone else, and are frequently even better at it.
The point I was trying to drive at is that some people act badly when there is no accountability. It's clear that both investment bankers and college kids need to be policed, but it's comparatively easy to catch college kids faking disabilities.
For the university disability question, an answer could be to give everyone the same advantages like more time on an exam, or give no one any. The current situation is almost designed to incentivize pretending to have a disability. This is what university is now teaching; lying works.
Indeed this is why Indians mostly hire Indians in Silicon Valley. They're highly religious and you can't trust the mostly atheist Whites and East Asians like that. They just don't have morality in the same way. But the Indians believe in Gods and that keeps them upright. It's a pity we don't have more Muslims here. They would have done the same. Particularly the more fundamentalist among them. Hijabs for all women but you know the law would be followed.
> They're highly religious and you can't trust the mostly atheist Whites like that
I have ethnic Indian heritage. This argument is B.S. It’s commonly lofted, including by WASPS. But the truth is familiarity in tribal dynamics predates such rationalization. There is more trust in tribe. But that isn’t because its members are more trustworthy. Just familiar.
I'm really tired of hearing about college students "misbehaving" when with something like this the fish rots from the head. Children learn from the role models we elevate, and look who gets ahead in our society. Full of grifters who rarely if ever see any accountability for their misbehavior. Hold the powerful who are doing this accountable before we cause another manufactured social panic over the actions of teenagers
So the university administrations then right? Because my school got caught doing something unethical (a few months ago) and when the alumni complained, the administration started smearing and attacking the alumni personally. Now they are complaining about donations being down. Keep in mind this school has billions in endowments and most of their complains are that a few other schools have even bigger endowments.
University administrations are not the role models we elevate. The behaviour of the administration that you're describing is for the same / similar reasons as what TSiege is saying.
I'm really tired of false dichotomies where we're supposed to blame only one party and forgive the other.
Wrong is wrong. Doesn't matter if you're following role models or leaders. Everyone is responsible for their own decisions and actions. You don't have to pick just one group to blame and let everyone else off the hook.
It's interesting how on either side of the aisle there is a lot of hostility to this, yet if you look at a modern white-collar workplace environment, specially tech jobs, people are constantly needing delays or extra time. Look how often projects are delayed. Or people show up late for work . Or workplace accommodations even for non-disabilities, such as office perks, which are very generous for prestigious jobs.
The SCOTUS delayed many times in rendering a ruling on the Trump tariffs despite having clerks and other staff to write the statements and abundant time.
People have very high expectations placed on students for some reason, and then the opposite for jobs especially as prestige of the job goes up.
Future leaders... Common, they are already grifters! It's a spectrum but the system selects for cheaters and psychopaths. Everything is highly superficial and empty.
Reality has become exactly like in T.S. Eliot's "The Hollow Men."
Well, all the stuff in Epstein files and all the leaders and supposed thinkers in them, Trump, Weiss, Kennedy, DOJ resigning ... one can safely say that existing elites are grifters. When relations to criminals, criminality itself and spectacular moral rot are rewarded in actual leadership, disability accomodation is not the primary issue.
Do you want future moral leaders? Prosecute Trump, Epstein friends, Musk, Bovino, Thiel and investigate corruption om supreme court. Investigate cops murdering citizens too. Investigate wall street.
Also, article did not claimed they are getting advantages on tests, just that they claim disability. There were no data on test advantages.
The biggest issue seemed to be ability to claim food intolerance to avoid mandatory cantine eating - so they get cheaper food. Plus some dorm room allocation issue.
If you want people to respect your ethical concerns, don't be a political hack. I can't help but notice all of the people you single out have specific politics. But the JE files contain many, many people from both sides. If you use things like this to smear those whose politics you don't like, you seem like the exact kind of person you are complaining about.
The college disability stuff sounds like small potatoes. At least, compared to Vietnam draft deferments. We used to have Gore and Kerry types, who volunteered for the infantry. Even with the lottery number 356, Trump ensured a medical deferment.
Spot on. This objective criticisms in this type of reactionary ragebait hit a lot weaker these days. Especially as this exact type of reactionary ragebait served to propel overt grifters into the highest offices of our country.
The fish rots from the head, and any discussion of this topic that doesn't at least touch upon the open corruption of our society's most powerful role models is prima facie dishonest.
I was thinking about this just the other day. The population of elite universities has greater mental illness than the broad population and in fact, 10 times higher rates than community college. There are two broad ways it could have happened:
* widespread medical malpractice assigning disabilities to healthy individuals - extending to modification of the criteria for diagnosis - and 2 in 5 Stanford students are dishonest individuals
* or maybe these people have these conditions but they aren't disabling and are actually enabling
So one thing we could do is give neuro-typical people more accommodations so that they have are on a level playing field with neuro-divergent people. A similar enough ratio is what we see for left-handedness in sports, which leads to a lot of science looking into why left-handedness is an advantage. Maybe neuro-divergence is an advantage. In sport, we don't care about leveling the field, but here we do, so we should.
>>>> It is more important to always follow the rules even if it means you may be less successful.
I think this is a stupid rule taught so that the privileged can game the systems but the vast majority of people don’t reap any benefits.
I have a rather contrarian view. If you have a symbiotic relationship (mostly friends and family) don’t game the system. If you have an adversarial relationship (employer, school, etc) where an entity has a lot more power over you than you have over them - feel free to game. People running these places treat you as a number. There is no shame in gaming it.
Key quote from The Time's article (1) linked in the OP:
"I often think back to that conversation with my upperclassman friend. She wasn’t proud of gaming the system and she wasn’t ashamed either. She was simply rational. The university had created a set of incentives and she had simply responded to them.
That’s what strikes me most about the accommodation explosion at Stanford and similar schools. The students aren’t exactly cheating and if they are, can you blame them? Stanford has made gaming the system the logical choice. When accommodations mean the difference between a cramped triple and your own room, when extra test time can boost your grade point average, opting out feels like self-sabotage. Who would make their lives harder when the easiest option is just a 30-minute Zoom call away?"
> The students aren’t exactly cheating and if they are, can you blame them?
I don't understand this logic. Many of these students are telling lies and manipulating to get a benefit that wasn't designed for them. In many cases (such as housing priority selection) they're actively taking spots from students with genuine needs. How do you arrive at a conclusion that this isn't cheating?
And why can't we blame them for their own decisions and actions? The university isn't forcing them to do this.
> when extra test time can boost your grade point average, opting out feels like self-sabotage.
Cheating on exams can also boost your grade point average.
I find these attempts to shift blame to anyone but the people making the decisions to be illogical. Let's call it what it is: Many of these students found a way to lie and cheat for personal gain with low or zero chance of getting caught, so they're choosing to do it. It's their choice, though.
Some of that is probably because students at elite universities come from families who understand exactly how to navigate meritocratic systems. Parents who know you need a tutor to ace the ACT and an essay editor to polish your application essays likely also understand that, in some situations, you should get a psychiatric evaluation and disclose any diagnoses so you can receive accommodations.
I'm fairly convinced a big part of clearing the barrier to entry of these elite institutions is having a deep understanding of exactly the things you need to do to succeed given the structure of the system and the nature of the competition. Students at "non-elite" institutions are more likely to come from backgrounds where even if you DO have a disability, maybe nobody ever tells you that you can go to the doctor for it, or that something like "accommodations" exist to help you.
Yea, everybody has some defects or other. But there's definitely money/opportunities in getting the paperwork to prove the "right kind" of defects.
An institution that can be navigated successfully with something other than merit isn't meritocratic.
While getting help for a legitimate disability is worthwhile and also something more likely to happen in a wealthy family, that is most certainly not what is happening here. These people game the system, get prescriptions for Adderall whether they need it or not, and get extra time on everything. I saw it a little bit when I was at a "non-elite" university. Dealing with "elite" alumni confirms this outlook too.
The last time this came up I visited some of the subreddits for universities, most of which had threads discussing this. The discussions there shed more light on the motivations than some of these articles do.
- At some universities, registering as having certain disabilities gives students priority access in the housing queue, so anyone who isn't registered with the disability office gets to choose after those who are.
- Certain disabilities qualified people for a lottery for single dorm rooms. They have a limited number of single rooms for students with disabilities, so now that 30-40% of the student body is registering for them it's just another lottery.
- Some universities allow students to record lectures only if they're registered with the disability office. If you're not, you can't record.
- I remember one comment saying that people were doing it just to get newer dorms with hardwood floors, which were reserved for students with disabilities
- Having certain disabilities qualified people to get out of the required meal plan. So if someone didn't want to buy a meal plan for whatever reason (including to save money) their only option was to claim certain disabilities. At other universities it was enough to claim you were following a Jain diet which objected to root vegetables and other things, which the meal plans couldn't provide for. If you don't claim a disability or Jain, you have to buy the meal plan.
Adding to this: Even back when I was in college (not that long ago) it became known that registering as having ADHD qualified you for extra time on exams. A lot of parents were pushing their kids to get registered as ADHD purely for academic advantage. A few people I knew did it and were blown away at how easy it was to get a diagnosis (they just memorized the ADHD inventory questions and went to the laziest doctor they could find) and then walk that down to the disability office and suddenly they were exempt from a lot of the test taking requirements every else had. I remember someone bragging that they got to take their tests in a special location with proctors that had to be scheduled later, so they were taking every test a day or two after everyone else. They used that time to quiz all of their friends on the test content. I doubt (or hope) this level of manipulation is still common though.
>Adding to this: Even back when I was in college (not that long ago) it became known that registering as having ADHD qualified you for extra time on exams.
In sixth grade I was frustrated focusing on exams because I'm easily irritated by noise (misophonia). So, I asked for a separate room, or, as I remember putting it, a closet. They sent me to a different room and offered me four hours. I couldn't seem to explain that I don't need more time, I just want it to be quiet. I never asked again.
I don't know how much this plays a role, and this is anecdotal, but I feel like the last 5-10 years or so, folks have put increasing stock in being (or being portrayed as) a victim.
A hobby growing in popularity seems to be perusing the internet on the lookout for something to be "outraged" by, no matter how mundane.
As someone who played hockey for years, this always felt like such a contrast from my experience where the norm was to conceal an injury and power through so you could keep playing.
If you were bleeding and unphased, you were the envy of your teammates. If a guy was limping off the ice after blocking a shot, you did not want to see the bruise he had underneath.
What I will be interested in seeing is, as students graduate into the job market, how the feigning victimhood approach fits into getting a well paying job. For all I know, it may pay off. Only time will tell I guess.
You can get all sorts of extra accommodations at school and work now if you're diagnosed with a disability. Disability rates have thus exploded. I support giving reasonable accommodations to people who are truly disabled but we have medicalized a lot of minor stuff that people ought to just "power through".
https://www.thetimes.com/us/news-today/article/40-percent-st...
Alternatively, we are gatekeeping basic decency behind having a diagnosed disability.
Could you define basic decency for us? Should every college student receive a private dorm room and unlimited time on exams?
I mean, sure, why not?
There are only two ways to give everyone a private dorm room:
1. Drastically reduce admissions until a 1:1 ratio of rooms to students is achieved. Once rooms are full, you have to reject students. Overall college admissions is cut significantly.
2. Massively increase tuitions so that more single-occupancy rooms can be built
So which one do you choose? I suspect most of these proposals rely on a world where money is infinite and nothing has to be sacrificed to get there.
Umm.. these elite universities are sitting on tens of billions of dollars in endowment funds. They can easily build dorm rooms if they care to - especially given the universities already own the land and have vast amounts of unused land.
Sounds good. How about a free emotional support pony while we're at it?
And people wonder why college tuition prices are so high.
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"Grievance culture," I believe, is the term you are looking for.
Most of the power in that came from classes of victims being untouchable. Some of that was the decorum of not wanting to punch down. Some was the reasonable ask that people realize they had advantages others didn't have.
All of it was completely unprepared for being gamed and infiltrated by bad faith actors.
> I feel like the last 5-10 years or so, folks have put increasing stock in being (or being portrayed as) a victim.
I've actually noticed the same pattern where I live in Europe. Some young adults go to great lengths to find a psychiatrist that will diagnose them something. I heard than on multiple occasions, reported by doctors themselves, and anecdotal evidence.
To be honest, I don't know how much this is a reality, and how much of it is an old man rant :)
I imagine most people are secretly turned off by the victim card (for the same reason you’d avoid someone who always has a “woe is me” story) but who knows how that affects the job market when virtue signaling is so powerful.
People don't hunt down outrage posts, they are delivered to them by algorithms seeking maximum engagement. The solution is nothing less than to outlaw recommendation algorithms.
1000% agree recommendation algorithms should not be allowed. Sorting and user criteria, great. But nothing should be pushed without clear acknowledgement of the user. Anything software recommends should be specified by the user.
I blame soccer for starting this societal trend.
Fool the ref, win the game.
(only partially tongue-in-cheek)
[dead]
Show me the incentives....
...and I'll show you the outcomes. Amusing how many of us were thinking the same thing.
Yep.
Obvious counter-move for the elite universities: Detail every student's disabilities & accommodations on their transcripts, to assist potential employers and graduate schools in anticipating their special needs.
Graduate schools and potential employers cannot discriminate based on the basis of a disability.
This might be shocking to you, but companies do illegal things all the time.
It's true that the law is clear.
Documenting the disabilities seems ethically dubious (and perhaps legally dicey -- not sure if HIPAA applies here); wouldn't it be sufficient to document just the accomodations? Those are what should be relevant to employers and grad schools, after all.
In a society characterized by low trust and led by shameless leaders, what else can one expect?
We've had shameless leaders for many generations.
This is something else. We used to prize resilience and toughness, especially in the face of adversity. Now we're given rewards for whining the loudest - and this is the anticipated outcome.
> We've had shameless leaders for many generations
The magnitude is different. Bovino and Miller act above the law. And the corruption and graft among some cabinet members is off the charts. (This following a Presidency where the preëmptive pardon was pioneered for family members.)
Eye-opening read about corruption: https://archive.is/CBQFY
(Which itself is a review of a book about the topic)
Need to preface that I’m not innocent of this at all, my primary source is my own experience: but I genuinely believe our approach to attention disorders - especially stimulant prescriptions and academic accommodations - will be widely ridiculed within the next 50 years. In a similar manner to how we think about smoking on airplanes in 80s.
Not trying to be dismissive or reductive, but when 15-50% of honors students at elite universities are a part of this it deserves way more scrutiny that it gets. Same is true in a lot of elite private sector spaces.
I find it more likely that we'll recognize the social benefits of widespread stimulant prescriptions, and make them easier to get.
There have been multiple periods of widespread non-medical stimulant use throughout history. Amphetamine wasn't even a controlled substance in the US until the 70s.
It generally does not translate to widespread social benefit.
I am very aware of the history of amphetamine use in the US. I think widespread access to amphetamines was mostly good (and widespread access to benzos was mostly bad).
"Our constitution was made only for a moral and religious people." -John Adams
if the religious part bothers you, substitute "willing to forgo benefits on principle rather than economic and utilitarian calculation, despite recognizing the prisoners dilemma of doing so"
not as snappy, but maybe less emotionally charged
The context of that quote is interesting. It's a pep talk to the militia. It could be summarized as "Our country is new and so it doesn't suck yet. Go out there and be honorable."
https://founders.archives.gov/documents/Adams/99-02-02-3102
He didn't intend it as political analysis, but it nonetheless makes a fine warning: "But should the People of America, once become capable of that deep simulation towards one another and towards foreign nations [...] this Country will be the most miserable Habitation in the World."
He's pretty clear that this had already affected every other country, and it seems like he expected us to go that way eventually. I don't think any set of laws will govern a people who would rather defeat their opponents than live together.
A religious corollary: "You cannot legislate righteousness", or to your point, "you cannot legislate [willingness to forgo benefits on principle rather than economic and utilitarian calculation, despite recognizing the prisoners dilemma of doing so]"
This shouldn’t be news. I grew up in Texas and most of my high school’s top 8% were cheating to stay ahead. Older siblings handed down tests and kids snuck into classes to steal exams.
At my university most kids I knew cheated. Having done the work honestly - lots of classmates would ask if they could glimpse my answers during exams.
In my naivety I believed that there would be somewhat of a comeuppance but no they’re just as successful (and some even more!) than I. When the outcomes are extreme, people will do anything to stay ahead.
Most Americans are honest hard working people. Don’t be them is the hard lesson I’ve learned.
Just to be clear, this absolutely wasn't the case in the 90s. This is a recent trend.
This is a downstream effect of credentialism. Considering the cognitive decline of the generation soon to enter universities and the work force, it's going to get worse.
Interesting! My experience was the opposite: every instance of cheating I saw turned out bad, save one plane geometry fake construction, and a physical chemistry class where the building janitor potentially stole copies of tests.
Heh, reminds me of 90's Romania when everyone dreamt of "tunuri" (literally "cannons") or "țepe" (literally "stakes") aka cons. Tun being a major con, one that would mean you're set for life and țeapă being any con.
Kids would dream of growing up and "să dea țeapă" (give a stake = pull a con) or "să tragă un tun" (fire a cannon = pull off major con) and then never working for the rest of their lives.
Maybe we should go back to treating people equally?
Give extra benefits to certain groups and people will naturally take advantage of it.
Officially, exam scores are based on knowledge, not ability to think fast enough to solve a problem.
In practice, the easiest lever professors can pull to reduce test scores is to decrease the time limit. Generally, that relatively benefits people that can think, read, and write faster, who happen to be the most knowledgeable.
But now, your exams are a glorified IQ or handwriting speed test.
That's where accomodations fail, because it's a free bonus that helps everyone instead of only benefitting the disabled.
I have a disability where I physically can't handwrite without pain, so I have to type everything. I also chose computer engineering, which requires creating matrices and circuit diagrams.
I physically, no matter how hard I try, draw a circuit diagram in Microsoft Paint as fast as you can draw one with your hand. I can not type and debug Microsoft Word's equation editor's rendering of a matrix faster than a normal person can draw it. So I get more time to do those things.
Generally, in most of my exams, the extra time wouldn't benefit a normal person in my situation. If I do not know the equations for a pn junction I'm not going to magically reinvent the avalanche effect.
In some exams, I can finish early because I deeply know the concepts. But oftentimes I'm spending a third of the exam futzing with the equation editor or using the line tool to get a zigzag trying to meet a deadline.
But the thing is, I also don't attend an elite university. I attended a mid-tier one called Toronto Metropolitan University where most students struggled with the concepts and the professors could test knowledge. Rarely did my peers do practice problems or show up to lectures. Time was almost never a constraint because my professors could differentiate on learning.
At a school like the University of Toronto, almost every student has studied past exams. They attend every lecture session including the ones they're not enrolled in. They learn everything and grind until 11 pm on practice problems.
At that level, it's hard to focus only on teaching new concepts. The few courses that do, like Harvard Math 55, are legendarily difficult for the professors and students. I know because I did really well in Waterloo's version before transferring due to autoimmune disease. Time wasn't an issue since every quiz was 1 question you instantly did or didn't understand. That exam tested for talent.
What's much easier, and what most elite schools do, is jam a ton of questions into every exam and write the IQ test.
It's hard to be fair to everyone. I approve of trying to help the disabled function in society, but ultimately the whole thing is arbitrary. Continued success as someone who is actually disabled depends on everyone being willing to put up with the disability and probably overlook better and more capable candidates to keep it going. That really only makes sense when the number of disabled people is small and they come from meager backgrounds, not when they go to ivy league schools in general...
Related:
Accomodation Nation
https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/2026/01/elite-universit...
Previously: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46150715
Interesting that the assumption in the replies so far is fraud (vs. greater access to diagnosis, etc.)
It’s much more grey than that. It’s a mixture of fraud, access to diagnosis, deference to experts, and ambition even at the individual level.
I don’t think many individuals in the population implicated by this article are acting will purely fraudulent and selfish intent. It’s more subtle.
It's not really an assumption. It's been well known for years that registering with certain disabilities gives students advantages in test taking (longer time, separate exam times), housing selection on campus, ability to record exams, and more.
The assumption being made, and which you're still making here, is the jump from "there are benefits to registering with a disability" -> "differences in registration rates are due to fraud".
Certainly one possible explanation, but "obviously people would abuse that, thus this is abuse" is still an assumption, not an evidenced claim.
Maybe one theory is that the universities are selecting for disability.
I've heard similar theories put forth about amoral wall street bankers. The gist of it was that old-school WASP bankers were relatively trustworthy because most of them believed that God was watching them. They were smart enough to outsmart the law, but not their religious sensibilities. Then amoral papists, Catholics, and whatnot came in and everything went to pot. (Some of the people spouting this theory were explicitly racist on top of it all.)
This theory was mainly used for discrimination, but there might have been a small grain of truth. Some people will do the right thing because they see that society functions only if most people behave in the common interest. Some people only do the right thing because they fear consequences, and fear of God can be good enough for people who are firmly convinced they're too smart to be caught by anyone else. Perhaps a decline in religion has unfettered the inherently amoral. In reality, it may just have been that enough bankers started doing amoral things that the rest decided they had to as well in order to keep up.
We might be seeing something similar in U.S. colleges. Some students have no fear of the consequences of being caught in a lie, and many more are simply reacting to seeing obvious frauds being rewarded with real advantages. Prof's and TA's are probably quite aware of what's going on, but are afraid to call it out. If a prof denies a student's bogus disability entitlements they could be sued or fired.
So, how do you walk this back? Unlike finance scams, it's relatively easy to spot fake disabilities. Universities could do their own assessments instead of relying on whatever outside doctors students can get to say they have a disability. They could strongly support profs who take action against fakers. This may cost them donations from upset parents, but failure to reign the fakery in could tarnish the brand of elite colleges and, eventually, cost them even more. Then again, it may already be the case that an ivy league degree says more about connections than competence.
-----------
Edit:
I just wanted to add that I really dislike the above theory and in no way endorse hiring religious people over non-religious people. In my experience, religious people are every bit as good as rationalizing immoral behaviour as everyone else, and are frequently even better at it.
The point I was trying to drive at is that some people act badly when there is no accountability. It's clear that both investment bankers and college kids need to be policed, but it's comparatively easy to catch college kids faking disabilities.
For the university disability question, an answer could be to give everyone the same advantages like more time on an exam, or give no one any. The current situation is almost designed to incentivize pretending to have a disability. This is what university is now teaching; lying works.
Indeed this is why Indians mostly hire Indians in Silicon Valley. They're highly religious and you can't trust the mostly atheist Whites and East Asians like that. They just don't have morality in the same way. But the Indians believe in Gods and that keeps them upright. It's a pity we don't have more Muslims here. They would have done the same. Particularly the more fundamentalist among them. Hijabs for all women but you know the law would be followed.
> They're highly religious and you can't trust the mostly atheist Whites like that
I have ethnic Indian heritage. This argument is B.S. It’s commonly lofted, including by WASPS. But the truth is familiarity in tribal dynamics predates such rationalization. There is more trust in tribe. But that isn’t because its members are more trustworthy. Just familiar.
Learning?
I'm really tired of hearing about college students "misbehaving" when with something like this the fish rots from the head. Children learn from the role models we elevate, and look who gets ahead in our society. Full of grifters who rarely if ever see any accountability for their misbehavior. Hold the powerful who are doing this accountable before we cause another manufactured social panic over the actions of teenagers
So the university administrations then right? Because my school got caught doing something unethical (a few months ago) and when the alumni complained, the administration started smearing and attacking the alumni personally. Now they are complaining about donations being down. Keep in mind this school has billions in endowments and most of their complains are that a few other schools have even bigger endowments.
Not to whom you're replying, but:
> Children learn from the role models we elevate
University administrations are not the role models we elevate. The behaviour of the administration that you're describing is for the same / similar reasons as what TSiege is saying.
Grifting turtles all the way down.
I'm really tired of false dichotomies where we're supposed to blame only one party and forgive the other.
Wrong is wrong. Doesn't matter if you're following role models or leaders. Everyone is responsible for their own decisions and actions. You don't have to pick just one group to blame and let everyone else off the hook.
... and many of those who have seen accountability have recently been pardoned.
It's interesting how on either side of the aisle there is a lot of hostility to this, yet if you look at a modern white-collar workplace environment, specially tech jobs, people are constantly needing delays or extra time. Look how often projects are delayed. Or people show up late for work . Or workplace accommodations even for non-disabilities, such as office perks, which are very generous for prestigious jobs.
The SCOTUS delayed many times in rendering a ruling on the Trump tariffs despite having clerks and other staff to write the statements and abundant time.
People have very high expectations placed on students for some reason, and then the opposite for jobs especially as prestige of the job goes up.
"if you're not cheating you're not competing"
Future leaders... Common, they are already grifters! It's a spectrum but the system selects for cheaters and psychopaths. Everything is highly superficial and empty.
Reality has become exactly like in T.S. Eliot's "The Hollow Men."
Well, all the stuff in Epstein files and all the leaders and supposed thinkers in them, Trump, Weiss, Kennedy, DOJ resigning ... one can safely say that existing elites are grifters. When relations to criminals, criminality itself and spectacular moral rot are rewarded in actual leadership, disability accomodation is not the primary issue.
Do you want future moral leaders? Prosecute Trump, Epstein friends, Musk, Bovino, Thiel and investigate corruption om supreme court. Investigate cops murdering citizens too. Investigate wall street.
Also, article did not claimed they are getting advantages on tests, just that they claim disability. There were no data on test advantages.
The biggest issue seemed to be ability to claim food intolerance to avoid mandatory cantine eating - so they get cheaper food. Plus some dorm room allocation issue.
If you want people to respect your ethical concerns, don't be a political hack. I can't help but notice all of the people you single out have specific politics. But the JE files contain many, many people from both sides. If you use things like this to smear those whose politics you don't like, you seem like the exact kind of person you are complaining about.
The college disability stuff sounds like small potatoes. At least, compared to Vietnam draft deferments. We used to have Gore and Kerry types, who volunteered for the infantry. Even with the lottery number 356, Trump ensured a medical deferment.
Yeah, people are so quick to beat up on students for needing extra time or accommodations,yet elite basically act with impunity.
Spot on. This objective criticisms in this type of reactionary ragebait hit a lot weaker these days. Especially as this exact type of reactionary ragebait served to propel overt grifters into the highest offices of our country.
The fish rots from the head, and any discussion of this topic that doesn't at least touch upon the open corruption of our society's most powerful role models is prima facie dishonest.
Also this article is a dupe: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46921569
I was thinking about this just the other day. The population of elite universities has greater mental illness than the broad population and in fact, 10 times higher rates than community college. There are two broad ways it could have happened:
* widespread medical malpractice assigning disabilities to healthy individuals - extending to modification of the criteria for diagnosis - and 2 in 5 Stanford students are dishonest individuals
* or maybe these people have these conditions but they aren't disabling and are actually enabling
So one thing we could do is give neuro-typical people more accommodations so that they have are on a level playing field with neuro-divergent people. A similar enough ratio is what we see for left-handedness in sports, which leads to a lot of science looking into why left-handedness is an advantage. Maybe neuro-divergence is an advantage. In sport, we don't care about leveling the field, but here we do, so we should.
Wonder if ADHD is counted (to get a prescription)
>>>> It is more important to always follow the rules even if it means you may be less successful.
I think this is a stupid rule taught so that the privileged can game the systems but the vast majority of people don’t reap any benefits.
I have a rather contrarian view. If you have a symbiotic relationship (mostly friends and family) don’t game the system. If you have an adversarial relationship (employer, school, etc) where an entity has a lot more power over you than you have over them - feel free to game. People running these places treat you as a number. There is no shame in gaming it.
This is a short-sighted construction of cheating. These situations aren't simple 1-to-1 relationships between students and their university.
When someone lies about having a disability to get priority housing access, they're competing against students who have real disabilities.
When someone cheats on exams, they throw the curve off for students who aren't cheating.
I am against breaking the letter of the law. But if you have wiggle room I’d go for it. Cheating is clearly against the law.
Key quote from The Time's article (1) linked in the OP:
"I often think back to that conversation with my upperclassman friend. She wasn’t proud of gaming the system and she wasn’t ashamed either. She was simply rational. The university had created a set of incentives and she had simply responded to them.
That’s what strikes me most about the accommodation explosion at Stanford and similar schools. The students aren’t exactly cheating and if they are, can you blame them? Stanford has made gaming the system the logical choice. When accommodations mean the difference between a cramped triple and your own room, when extra test time can boost your grade point average, opting out feels like self-sabotage. Who would make their lives harder when the easiest option is just a 30-minute Zoom call away?"
1: https://archive.ph/RPegw#selection-1853.0-1857.496
> The students aren’t exactly cheating and if they are, can you blame them?
I don't understand this logic. Many of these students are telling lies and manipulating to get a benefit that wasn't designed for them. In many cases (such as housing priority selection) they're actively taking spots from students with genuine needs. How do you arrive at a conclusion that this isn't cheating?
And why can't we blame them for their own decisions and actions? The university isn't forcing them to do this.
> when extra test time can boost your grade point average, opting out feels like self-sabotage.
Cheating on exams can also boost your grade point average.
I find these attempts to shift blame to anyone but the people making the decisions to be illogical. Let's call it what it is: Many of these students found a way to lie and cheat for personal gain with low or zero chance of getting caught, so they're choosing to do it. It's their choice, though.
> they're actively taking spots from students with genuine needs.
How would determine who has genuine needs? Many of these conditions have no definitive tests.
Are there an allotted number of Jainists?