A senior athletics official at the University of Georgia posted a message late last year on an online discussion board for academic advisers, looking for ways to streamline the processing of academic accommodations for students with special needs.
The official, Ted White, wanted to know how other institutions were handling students’ accommodations, which can include help with taking notes, audio textbooks, and time extensions on tests. Such arrangements have become common in athletic departments as increasing numbers of athletes are diagnosed with learning disabilities and attention disorders.
Colleagues from several institutions, including Texas A&M University, the University of California at Los Angeles, and the University of Southern California, chimed in, describing the services that have helped their players, according to discussion-board messages that were shared with The Chronicle.
Increased testing at the college level for learning disabilities has led to a backlog in the coordinating of accommodations for players. In February, a dozen athletes at Texas A&M were awaiting feedback from tests they took in November, which will determine what services they can receive. Athletic departments want players to get those accommodations quickly so they don’t fall behind in their studies and risk losing their eligibility for sports.
Diagnoses of learning problems are increasing for all college students, as awareness of the conditions has grown. But the increases among athletes are especially pronounced. Experts in special education commend the focus on testing and intervention, which they say can help more athletes succeed academically. Some psychologists, though, worry that athletes are being overdiagnosed to get accommodations that help them stay academically eligible.
To handle the increasing number of players with learning and attention problems, as well as other athletes who need help with time-management and study skills, Texas A&M’s athletic department employs two reading specialists, three learning specialists, and 50 part-time “learning assistants,” including many former elementary- and middle-school teachers. A decade ago, it had about half as many people in those jobs.
“Their plates are full, all of them,” says Garry Gibson, assistant athletic director for academic services, “and we need more.”
The responsibilities of learning specialists vary from campus to campus, but their jobs typically involve working one-on-one with a dozen or so athletes to improve their reading, comprehension, and test-taking skills and to help them stay on top of assignments.
In the past five years, at least one in five big-time athletic departments — including Purdue University, the University of Houston, and the University of Louisville — has created a new learning-specialist position, with some programs adding several to their staff.
We’ve found out that the sooner you start to address the problems, the less impact they’ll have.
Between 2012 and 2015, the number of learning specialists grew nearly 70 percent among the membership of the National Association of Academic Advisors for Athletics, according to the group. In 2012, 51 learning specialists from the biggest athletic departments were members of the association; last year there were 85.
The number of jobs has grown as colleges have spent more time and money testing players for learning and attention problems, and as programs have beefed up their budgets to help students with the most serious academic challenges. Some universities now spend more than $3 million a year on academic support for athletes.
Many colleges are testing more than just the lowest academic performers. Louisiana State University at Baton Rouge screens about 60 of its 100 or so incoming athletes every year for problems with learning and attention. About half of those students receive more extensive mental-health testing, which, at LSU, can cost up to $1,800 per student. To help those and other players, the university employs seven learning specialists.
Athletic directors say the increased resources mark a positive development.
“A lot of these students come to our campuses unprepared, and it’s no fault of theirs,” says Scott Woodward, the athletic director at Texas A&M. “We want to give them the best opportunity to compete in the classroom, and we think it’s a model for our campuses to see how we do it.”
A Growing Problem
The increased diagnoses have come in part because of new regulations governing the Americans With Disabilities Act of 1990, which prohibits discrimination against people with disabilities. In 2008, the federal government broadened the definition of what constitutes a disability, leading to a sharp increase in diagnoses on some campuses. Some leaders of disability-services offices say that they have seen a doubling or tripling of students with learning conditions in recent years. According to the Education Department, about 11 percent of college students have some sort of disability. College disability directors and various studies have estimated that the proportion of college students with learning disabilities is about 3 to 5 percent.
On some campuses, far larger percentages of athletes have been diagnosed with learning disabilities. About one of every five scholarship football players at Ohio State University has a learning disability. At LSU, some 40 percent of the football team does.
Ten years ago, over 60 percent of football and women’s basketball players at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill were diagnosed with a learning disability or attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder, or ADHD, according to documents the university released last year as part of an investigation into its fake-class scandal.
Bradley Hack, a sports psychologist who consults with the athletic department, raised concerns about those figures in a 2012 email he sent to two neuropsychologists. He suggested that the testing, which was done by an independent neuropsychologist, was inadequate, and that nearly every student who was evaluated received an ADHD diagnosis.
David B. Coppel, director of neuropsychological services and research at the University of Washington Sports Concussion Program, expressed concerns to Mr. Hack about one of the tools that the Chapel Hill neuropsychologist was using. Another neuropsychologist, Adam Shunk, who works with Purdue’s athletic department, said the interviews of Chapel Hill athletes did not appear to be thorough, but that some institutions overlooked such problems.
“From an athletic dept’s perspective, they don’t really care about the quality of the evaluation,” Mr. Shunk wrote, “but is the person licensed and does it meet NCAA documentation criteria (depressing but true).”
“The situation you described,” he added, “sounds like pretty typical practice, but it is a huge disservice to the athletes.”
Bubba Cunningham, the athletic director at Chapel Hill, said last week that he was not aware of the numbers or the concerns the psychologists expressed, which were first detailed on the website BlueDevilicious. But Mr. Cunningham said the university no longer worked with the neuropsychologist in question.
Nicki Moore, a senior athletics official at Chapel Hill, said that the football team had about 10 players a year over the past three years with an ADHD diagnosis but that the department did not keep information about players’ learning disabilities in the aggregate.
Experts in learning disabilities question why the percentages of learning-disabled and ADHD designations are sometimes much higher among athletes than regular students.
“The problem is, they may not have a learning disability as formally defined by the federal government, but more of what I might call a swiss-cheese education, with lots of holes in knowledge,” says Jerome Schultz, a neuropsychologist and lecturer at Harvard Medical School who is chair of the professional advisory board of the Learning Disabilities Association of America. He worries that learning disabilities are sometimes being diagnosed liberally to get athletes special accommodations that other students would not receive.
Determining Solutions
Holly Lane was one of the first people to recognize the prevalence of learning disabilities among college athletes. Now an associate professor of special education at the University of Florida, she began consulting with its athletic department more than 20 years ago.
When she started, in 1994, the department had identified about five players with a learning disability. About a decade later, she says, 10 times as many athletes had been identified. She believes that the increases have come as a result of more athletes being tested, and that there are more learning disabilities identified among athletes than other students because players are more scrutinized in the recruiting and admissions process.
“We’ve found out that the sooner you start to address the problems,” she says, “the less impact they’ll have.”
Keith Carodine, director of Florida’s academic-support program for athletes, says Florida’s athletic department spends $300,000 a year on tutors who work with students who have learning disabilities. That’s about $75,000 more than the program spent a decade ago.
Ohio State starts assessing players even before they arrive on campus, working closely with its coaches to determine what services students might need, says David L. Graham, assistant provost and associate athletic director for student-athlete success. His staff looks at academic transcripts and test scores, as well as the kinds of schools players have attended. Students from the lowest-performing schools, he says, often have problems with academic preparedness or an undiagnosed learning disability.
When Mr. Graham was hired, in 2006, he says many coaches were reluctant to talk to recruits and their families about learning disabilities, for fear that they might offend them. But as more players have been diagnosed with a learning disability, the stigma has started to recede, Mr. Graham says. Coaches now broach the subject as a way of describing the many services the university provides. Ohio State has nine learning specialists, all of whom were hired during Mr. Graham’s tenure.
The university’s learning specialists work with a mix of athletes, not just students with learning and attention problems. In fact, Mr. Graham says, some of the worst academic performers don’t have learning disabilities; they are just not ready for college.
“They have the ability, they just haven’t been taught,” he says. “A lot of times people will try to put that into a learning disability. A lot of it, in my mind, is a lack of preparation.”
‘Organized Chaos’
Elysa R. Newman, who has been a learning specialist at three institutions, most recently the University of Maryland at College Park, has seen players with a variety of academic limitations. Some students, she says, have multiple learning disabilities. Others are so easily distracted that they can only concentrate for 15 to 20 minutes at a time, even when they’re on medication.
But with the proper accommodations, many students can thrive, says Ms. Newman, who is now director for academic achievement at Towson University.
Despite the field’s maturation, the daily work of learning specialists is still “kind of organized chaos,” she says. “You might have a plan for what you want a student to do — objectives to complete that day or that week — and then something happens, like the student forgets their book. You definitely do a lot of on-the-fly problem-solving.”
Ultimately, she says, the job of a learning specialist is to encourage students to solve such problems themselves.
“The goal is for them to not have to need me,” she says. “But then I’d be out of a job.”
Brad Wolverton is a senior writer who covers college sports. Follow him on Facebook and Twitter @bradwolverton, or email him at brad.wolverton@chronicle.com.
