Adulthood II: Youth with Disabilities in College

The number of students with disabilities going on to college has almost doubled in the past twenty years - it is up 173%. That is good news. The bad news is the failure rate of students is extremely high. Only one-fourth of students with disabilities graduate from a community college within five years.

Recommendations from the Bridges Project

The Bridges Project was a federal research project with the goal of increasing the number of students with disabilities who succeed in college. A few of their findings were:

• Independent living skills are important. Students with disabilities should be taught to do things on their own while still in high school. These include learning to drive, use public transportation, handling their own money.

10 MINUTE ASSIGNMENT: Write down a list of all the skills a person must be able to handle to live completely on her own. For example, grocery shopping, doing her own laundry, washing dishes. Start now working on these skills to allow yourself or your child to be successful living away from home.

• Students should get in the habit of studying when they get home, even if it is not asked of them.  They should learn how to manage their work without the help of a teacher. -- This is much easier said than done. Students with disabilities, particularly learning disabilities, often require much more time to finish their assignments. When no work is assigned by the teacher, they just want a break, and understandably so. However, once they get into college they will be expected to be self-directed. If they need to read the first 300 pages of the textbook by the midterm exam, no one is going to tell them to read 15 pages each night

• If teachers do not provide notes of the class lectures, such as copies of the overheads - ask for copies.  This will help students with disabilities who have difficulties taking notes because of seeing and hearing problems. 
• Students should try to follow along with the patterns present in math and science, asking questions or scheduling meetings whenever they need to.
• Students with disabilities should be encouraged to complete their education so that they can get jobs. This encouragement includes working with the high school counselors as early as eight and ninth grade to make sure students are taking the courses they need to be admitted to college.
• Students should enroll in regular and dvanced math and science classes.  This will help make the college level math and science classes a lot easier to go through so that students can get the proper degree. 
• Teachers should not lower their expectations for the students with disabilities.  Teachers have been known to make classes easier for these students but this ends up hurting them when they get to college.  Asking during parent-teacher conferences, "Is this what is needed to prepare for college?" will strengthen the expectation that students will go to college. If they are not being prepared for college, why not?

The Bridges team decided that self-determination is the most important thing in understanding one’s disability.  Students must be encouraged in school so that they can have this determination.  They need to learn how to do things themselves so that they can make the most of college. To get careers in science after college, these students have to know how to learn independently while using the technology and tools available to them.  High school and college faculty need to expect a lot from these students, despite their disabilities, and make sure that they have the help that they need to successfully go though classes. 

Learn more about youth with disabilities