(12/12/2024) Kingston, ON - Thomas Abrams, Ph.D. Associate Professor, Department of Sociology at Queen’s University in his office at Mackintosh-Corry Hall. Photograph by James Paddle-Grant/ Globe & MailJames Paddle-Grant/The Globe and Mail
In Thomas Abrams’s second-year sociology course at Queen’s University in Kingston last year, about one-third of students were registered with the school’s disabilities office.
That means they were eligible for academic accommodations, which can apply to classroom delivery as well as assessment, and can range from more time on assignments to a semi-private room for exams and a memory cue sheet to assist them.
One-third of a single class might sound high, but it’s also increasingly the norm. More than 6,000 of the roughly 28,000 students at Queen’s last year (22 per cent) were approved for such accommodations by the disabilities office. Five years ago, it was about 2,250 students (9 per cent).
“The numbers are up,” said Prof. Abrams, who is disabled himself and is an advocate for a more effective accommodations system.
“We are faced with a complex pedagogical, human rights, privacy, labour and psychological issue,” he said.
What’s happening at Queen’s is part of a trend that’s apparent across Ontario and the rest of Canada. The number of students registering with disabilities at universities has rapidly increased, causing resources to become strained. The shift has also raised questions about the fairness of accommodations and triggered frustration among professors who are unsure how to handle the volume of requests.
As recently as 2013-14, the proportion of students registered with a disability office across all Ontario universities was six per cent. In a little under a decade it doubled to about 12 per cent. At McMaster University in Hamilton, the number of students identified as having a disability nearly tripled between 2013 and 2022. At the University of British Columbia, 26 per cent of undergraduates said they had a disability in a 2020 survey, up from 22 per cent in 2018-19, with mental illness by far the leading category.
Over the past 10 to 15 years, there has been a broadening of society’s understanding of disability that has coincided with a growth in diagnoses.
The Canadian University Survey Consortium has published a portrait of first-year students at schools across the country since 1998. A paper that looked at data from the survey, published on the eCampusOntario website, found the number of students reporting a disability was around 5 per cent for most of the 1998-2008 period. That jumped to 22 per cent in 2016 and 31 per cent in 2022.
Often, these students’ conditions aren’t physical or visible. Three-quarters of those registered with Queen’s Student Accessibility Services (QSAS) have a disability that is not physical: 33 per cent have a mental-health disability, 29 per cent have ADHD and 14 per cent have a learning disability. Most of the growth in accommodation requests across the province over the past decade has been in those three categories.
Sam Chamberland, a second-year economics and environmental studies student at Queen’s, has been diagnosed with a working memory disorder. He is given an additional 50 per cent of allotted time on tests and is allowed to write his exams in a small room to reduce distractions – measures he believes help him succeed academically.
What looks like a shift in the university-age population, Mr. Chamberland said, also reflects a change that occurred when these students were younger. He first received accommodations in high school.
“I think it’s getting caught more often and identified at younger ages,” Mr. Chamberland said.
An independent report commissioned by Queen’s to examine the university’s accommodations policies, prompted by the rapid increase in student needs and a desire to assess the fairness and adequacy of those policies, was released in June. The report found a high degree of willingness to address the needs of a growing community but also described several issues it recommends correcting.
The report’s authors said they couldn’t discern the reason for the recent increase but described a perception across campus that Queen’s has been hit by a “tsunami” of students asking for accommodations.
Queen’s University spokeswoman Michelle Lewis said there were some administrative changes in 2022-23 that bumped the numbers upwards, including adding short-term accommodations for conditions such as concussions or broken limbs.
It may be the student population is simply changing in a way that reflects the broader population. The rate of disability nationally for the 15 to 24 age group was about 20 per cent in 2022, according to Statistics Canada, up from 13 per cent in 2017.
Whatever the cause, tensions have been growing over academic accommodations at Queen’s for several years.
In order to receive an accommodation, a student needs documentation of their disability from a physician, psychologist or nurse practitioner that provides insight into the functional impairments of the disability. The student then meets with a Queen’s adviser to discuss how their disability affects their learning and works with the adviser to create an accommodation plan.
Accessible entrances to Queen’s University’s Mackintosh-Corry Hall.James Paddle-Grant/The Globe and Mail
The panel reported a widespread impression that students are being granted accommodations unfairly. It described that view as a largely unproven suspicion that has fuelled an image of a system “rife with abuse,” which is “being exploited to make university ‘easier’” for some people.
Finley Mackay, a first-year sociology student, receives accommodations for ADHD and dyslexia. She gets 50 per cent more time and a quiet room for exams.
Although the measures help her, she has heard other students cast doubt on the legitimacy of some learning disabilities. In some cases she feels similarly skeptical, she said.
“Certain people should have accommodations and certain people shouldn’t. There’s a difference between not being able to read what’s on the paper and having a little bit of anxiety before a test,” she said.
Some faculty have questioned whether they alone are concerned with upholding academic standards. The panel report described a “leadership gap” at the university and called on its leaders to change the culture.
The report published submissions from Queen’s professors, who were not named, that offer a sense of their frustration. Among the issues they cite are cases where students are not to be called on to speak in public, making seminars and class discussion fraught, if not impossible.
Workload has also increased. Looking at the example of his own course, Prof. Abrams estimates that correspondence around accommodation requests can take several hours for each assignment. Other professors complain about the time required to tailor their teaching and evaluation.
The Ontario Human Rights Code requires universities to accommodate students to the point of undue hardship. That’s a legal reality that’s not about to change, Prof. Abrams said.
“Instead of fighting over who needs support and who doesn’t, let’s focus on the how and give instructors and students the tools they need to succeed.”
Smaller class sizes would help a great deal, he said, but in an era of budget tightening, classes have tended to grow.
Jay Dolmage, a professor at the University of Waterloo and the author of a book on ableism in higher education, said universities have historically excluded students with disabilities. Studies have shown that most students with a disability at university won’t disclose it and will never seek an accommodation, he said. And when asked to make accommodations, institutions tend to do just one thing: offer additional time.
“The system is overburdened doing one very rudimentary thing,” he said.
The people who work in disability offices have growing caseloads — often one staff member for every 300 students, according to a recent study by the Higher Education Quality Council of Ontario. The HEQCO report said the current model for supporting students with disabilities is unsustainable.
As the number of students with disabilities has increased, funding for supports has not kept pace, with the result that funding per student declined by 23 per cent from 2016 to 2021, the study said.
At Queen’s, the QSAS office has roughly doubled its staff in the past few years to about 14 full-time employees, according to Cynthia Gibney, the executive director of student wellness services.
“It’s been challenging. We do our very best to meet the demand,” she said.
Queen’s has introduced new case management software and daily drop-in appointments to address wait times and encouraged incoming students to address their requests as soon as they’re admitted, rather than waiting until classes begin.
“Our requirement to provide supports for students with disabilities has gone up, and there’s no solution that is not costly. That’s the crux of the matter,” said Mary Olmstead, president of the Queen’s Faculty Association.
The panel report at Queen’s made 26 recommendations. At the top of the list was a change in “culture, attitude and method” that would go beyond simply providing mandatory letters of accommodation and basic compliance with the law to reframe how the university engages disabled students. It also called for the hiring of a senior academic leader responsible for accommodation and a committee of staff, faculty and students to advise that person, half of whom should be disabled.
Queen’s has appointed an interim academic working group to address the most pressing issues identified by the panel.
“All I hope is that Queen’s takes every one of those recommendations seriously and implements them. If they do that, we will be a million miles ahead of where we were,” Prof. Olmstead said.