The program that Rebecca Hansen heads at Marshall University would make any growth-minded administrator happy: It started with just one student nine years ago, but now receives five times as many applicants every year for the 10 students it admits. Students pay $3,600 for the program each semester, on top of tuition. And since all but two of the 38 current students come from out of state, they’re providing a boost to the West Virginia college’s tuition revenue.
But the trend underlying the flourishing program is sobering. Ms. Hansen heads Marshall’s College Program for Students With Asperger’s Syndrome.
An increasing number of children are being diagnosed with disorders that affect their ability to succeed in college. In addition to people with Asperger’s syndrome, who often function well intellectually but have social problems, colleges are seeing record numbers of students with learning disabilities, anxiety disorders, and attention deficit hyperactivity disorder. While most colleges have offices that provide services to students with such conditions (as well as to those with physical disabilities), experts say few colleges have created programs that provide the robust help many students with learning or emotional problems and disabilities need. That’s driving huge demand at a few dozen colleges (such as Marshall, the Universities of Arizona and Connecticut, and Mercyhurst College) that are considered a step ahead of their counterparts in providing tutoring, mentoring, social activities, and living skills to such students.
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“We have professionals from other colleges visit us once a month,” Ms. Hansen says. “Some say, ‘Hey, I’ve got 18 students with Asperger’s. What am I going to do?’ ”
The programs at the various colleges deal with a wide range of disabilities, and the language used to describe the conditions varies. Some refer to disabilities or disorders; others use the terms “learning differences” or “learning challenges.”
The University of Connecticut, known for developing individualized plans to help students with learning or psychological disabilities succeed, now works with more than 1,000 such students—almost 6 percent of an undergraduate student population of more than 17,300.
Mercyhurst College, a 3,000-student private college in Pennsylvania, admits 35 students a year into separate programs that help students with diagnosed learning disabilities and Asperger’s syndrome. “We actively recruit students with qualifying disabilities to come on our campus,” says Dianne Rogers, who oversees the programs.
The University of Arizona’s Strategic Alternative Learning Techniques Center, which started with just three students in 1981, now serves 600 students a year through its offices in a prominent 16,000-square-foot building near the student union. The program’s reputation and reasonable cost ($2,400 per semester, apart from tuition and housing) make it a big draw for out-of-state students. Some 75 percent of the center’s students are from out of state, with the majority from California.
MacLean Gander, an English and journalism professor at Landmark College, a Vermont institution whose mission is serving students with learning disabilities and ADHD, predicts that given the projected decline in the number of high-school graduates in coming years, some colleges will try to maintain enrollment by aggressively courting students with learning disabilities.
“My sense is it may become a niche thing,” he says. “Colleges that are struggling will say, ‘Let’s strike out in this new direction.’ ”
They will very likely have plenty of candidates. A report released in August by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention found that 9 percent of children had been diagnosed with ADHD from 2007 to 2009, up from 7 percent in 1998 to 2000. Autism, formerly a rare condition, now affects one in 110 American children, following a change in diagnostic practices that acknowledges a broad autism spectrum. And university officials say the most rapidly growing reason students are coming in for help centers on psychiatric problems, including anxiety, depression, and bipolar disorder.
With many colleges offering only limited services to such students, for-profit companies are moving in. College Living Experience, founded 20 years ago in Fort Lauderdale, Fla., now serves more than 200 students with autism disorders or learning disabilities in six cities. The company provides students with tutoring, counseling, social outings, and instruction in living skills like grocery shopping, cooking, and paying bills, at a cost of $35,000 per year, in addition to tuition and housing costs. The students in each city attend a variety of institutions, with more than two-thirds enrolling at community colleges.
Alexis Meier, a sophomore at the University of Colorado at Denver, is one of about 75 students in the College Living Experience’s Denver program. She was diagnosed with dyslexia in kindergarten and developed extreme anxiety about tests during high school.
She meets at least once a week with an academic tutor and with a mentor who helps her work through challenges, such as a recent spat with a roommate. The students in the program all live in the same apartment complex, even though they attend different colleges. When students need a break from academic pressures, they can “borrow” one of two golden retrievers owned by resident assistants who live in the building.
Ms. Meier has learned to ask for Dylan or Wilkie whenever her stress level rises.
“It’s nice to not have to think about getting a paper done, and just go play with a dog,” she says. “You can break out of the routine and focus on an animal that’s always happy to see you, always smiling.”
Amy Radochonski, vice president of College Living Experience, says the company prefers to operate in cities where colleges provide some support to students with learning disabilities, but not too much. “It wouldn’t make sense for us to be in Tucson, where the SALT program is,” she says.
Even as universities create sophisticated programs, they weigh the question of how many students they want to serve. Marshall’s program for students with Asperger’s has three full-time employees and 17 graduate assistants who each spend 20 hours a week with students. The program turns away large numbers of applicants in part because the staff is already maxed out—but also because admitting 10 students a year seems to provide the right mix for the 14,000-student campus, Ms. Hansen says.
“We don’t really want Marshall to become the hub for students with Asperger’s,” Ms. Hansen says. “Professors can only handle so much in a classroom setting at any one time.”
Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, a private university in Troy, N.Y., with 5,200 students, started a weekly workshop four years ago for its roughly 30 students with autism or Asperger’s. The two-hour meetings, led by an autism expert, deal with issues like time management and peer and faculty interactions.
Mark Smith, Rensselaer’s dean of students, says the university has considered what would happen if Rensselaer—"more by default than design"—became one of a dozen or so universities to which students with Asperger’s gravitated. “We would deal with it as best we could if and when it happens,” Mr. Smith says. “Right now we’re able to hold our own, but it is work-intensive.”
The level of service provided by the special programs at various colleges varies. Marshall requires its Asperger’s students to check in twice a day. At Arizona’s SALT center, students create a “learning plan” with a counselor and meet with the counselor once a week. The Rensselaer workshop is voluntary.
A separate set of college programs focuses on students with intellectual disabilities, including high-functioning students with Down syndrome. The students in these programs often take separate classes and aspire to earn a certificate that will prepare them for independent living and a job, rather than for a degree. (See facing page.)
However, there’s some overlap between the two types of programs. Alec MacKenzie, a student from Columbia, Ill., with Asperger’s, was admitted via regular admission to two universities but instead chose to enroll in the PACE program for students with multiple learning disabilities at National-Louis University, a private institution in Chicago.
The two-year program typically enrolls students who have severe learning challenges and IQ’s between 70 and 90, but Mr. MacKenzie has the traditional Asperger’s profile: He is bright but socially awkward. He chose to attend PACE for its intense coursework on topics like independent living and the importance of social relationships.
“In high school, I’d been picturing myself going to a regular college and earning a four-year degree right off the spot,” he says. “But I figured out that I wasn’t ready for that step just yet.”
After completing the PACE program this spring, he plans to stay in the Chicago area and take classes at Oakton Community College, with continued assistance from a transitional program operated by PACE.
The larger programs for students with learning disabilities tend to measure their effectiveness by tracking retention and graduation rates. Freshmen who work with UConn’s Center for Students With Disabilities have returned for their sophomore years at rates exceeding 90 percent for the past three years. The six-year-graduation rates for students who use Arizona’s Strategic Alternative Learning Techniques Center matched the university’s six-year rate at 59 percent in 2010, according to Robin Wisniewski. the SALT Center’s director.
Ms. Wisniewski says achieving parity at six years is noteworthy because “these are students who in the past may not have been given the chance to attend a four-year institution.”
Some families are finding that the most cost-effective route to college success is to have one or both parents serve as tutor and life-skills coach, while the student lives at home and attends a community college.
Mr. Gander of Landmark College, who was vice president for academic affairs for 11 years, says the college is seeing an increasing number of students who come for a three-week summer program that serves as an introduction to college-level work. They then return to a community college near their home in the fall. “They’re taking the strategies that they learned from us, and using them back home,” he says.