The number of students receiving academic accommodations for disabilities has steadily increased at the College over the past year, echoing a national trend. During the 2024-25 academic year, 18 percent of students at the College received academic accommodations, which include extended time on tests and the option to work in a distraction-free environment, according to Director of Accessible Education Katy Evans. This is a 12.5 percent increase from the 2023-24 academic year.

All told, during the 2024-25 academic year, 25 percent of the College’s student body had disability accommodations of any kind — including academics, housing, dining, and short-term accommodations, such as accommodations for injuries.

Evans expects the number of students with approved academic accommodations to remain roughly constant or slightly increase from the last academic year. In fall 2025, 16 percent of the student body had approved academic accommodations, but Evans anticipates that more students will request accommodations during spring 2026, putting the number of total accommodations on par with last year. “I anticipate a similar rise in both the overall and academic accommodations numbers over the spring semester, so we may end up in a similar place as 24-25 (or may see an increase),” Evans wrote in an email to the Record.

The Office of Accessible Education (OAE) does not have clear accommodations-related data prior to the implementation of a new records management software in 2023. However, Evans said that she noted an increase in academic accommodations before 2023. “It is definitely fair to say that our numbers have been going up steadily the last five to 10 years,” she said.

The College is not the only institution seeing an increase in academic accommodations. During the past decade, the number of college students who report disabilities has grown by more than 50 percent nationally, according to a recent New York Times analysis of government data.

Although the specific cause of this upswing remains unclear, Evans believes that increased awareness of accommodations, decreased stigma surrounding mental illness, and lingering impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic could all play a role. “We are seeing higher rates of mental health diagnoses nationally, and especially at Williams,” she said. “College in general can just be really difficult. And so a lot of these mental health diagnoses are coming out in college.”

This increase has been more pronounced at institutions with wealthier student bodies. According to Evans, wealth is a factor contributing to the higher proportions of students with testing accommodations. “Elite schools might see higher rates of students with diagnosed disabilities if they’re coming from more privileged backgrounds,” Evans said. 

For students with mental health diagnoses, Evans noted that the College has resources to support them. “We have a counseling center, we have a health center,” she said. “[The OAE] provides information and guidance around neuropsychological testing in the area.”

Changes in the legal landscape within the past few decades have also prompted more students to seek 504 plans — accommodation plans for students with academic disabilities that impact the ability to focus, read, or otherwise inhibit test taking — before they reach college. 

Under the 1990 Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA), public and private colleges are required to provide accommodations to individuals with disabilities, defined in the bill as anyone with “a physical or mental impairment that substantially limits one or more of the major life activities.”

In 2008, the ADA was amended, broadening the definition of disabilities to include learning disabilities like attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder and mental health diagnoses like anxiety, making it possible for students with these conditions to request accommodations.

Prior to these legal changes, it was not common to hear of students utilizing these services, according to Eric Hanson ’88, who majored in English and French at the College. “I had no awareness at all about students who were permitted to operate in a different environment,” Hanson wrote in an email to the Record. “Certain professors were known for permitting extensions of one or more days on papers. But usually it was just because the student was overwhelmed or backed up with work, not tied to any kind of condition they had.”

Specific diagnoses that are common today were unheard of a few decades ago. “ADHD wasn’t widely diagnosed at that time,” Hanson wrote in an email to the Record. “I didn’t hear of the term until after Williams myself.”

ADHD is now one of the most commonly reported academic disabilities at the College, according to Evans. The same is true at other institutions.

Despite the lack of formal diagnoses a few decades ago, there was still a general culture of stress at the College, according to Hanson. “There was lots of anxiety everywhere on campus, but it wasn’t explicitly addressed,” he said. “I remember discussing stress with other students, but we didn’t have much of a vocabulary beyond the basics.”

To request academic accommodations at the College today, students must receive a diagnosis and work with a therapist to determine whether accommodations are necessary, according to Evans.

The process includes an ADA-mandated interactive stage, in which the student discusses with OAE staff the classes they are taking and the types of assignments that they find particularly challenging. “We use all of that information and put it together and figure out what accommodations are needed for them to access their Williams experience in the same way that someone without a disability would ideally,” Evans said.

The majority of students who apply for accommodations receive a plan, even if it is not the one they requested, according to Evans. “By the time a student is requesting an accommodation, they have a history of working with a healthcare provider, and they know that they’ve been struggling for a while, so our approval rates are pretty high,” she said. 

Alex Farman-Farmaian ’28, who was diagnosed with dyslexia in high school, expressed how the application is relatively simple for students who came to the College with a diagnosis. “The process for requesting academic accommodations has been easy and seamless,” he told the Record. “Shoutout to the OAE. I submitted a form my freshman year with my dyslexia diagnosis and they approved [my accommodations] shortly after.”

Faculty have some discretion in deciding how to administer assessments for students who have accommodations in a way that allows them to take exams apart from the rest of the class, according to Associate Professor of Philosophy and Chair of the Committee on Academic Integrity Justin Shaddock. Professors may reserve a room through OAE, though OAE does not have the resources to offer a proctor for each exam, which leaves some students alone in these alternative testing environments. “We do ask them to leave their belongings and devices outside of the testing room, but we are not in there with them,” Evans said. 

Amid the rising number of students who receive accommodations, some professors are concerned that students are manipulating the system by reporting a false disability or by abusing accommodations that allow students to take a test without a proctor.

“There are a lot of faculty members who think students use accommodations to cheat,” Shaddock said in an interview with the Record. “The whole point of accommodations is … to level the playing field,” he said. “If there’s a relatively small class, and there’s an exam and it’s proctored by a faculty member, and they’re really watching everybody, and then there’s people with accommodations and there’s no proctor, then that’s not fair, that’s not a level playing field.”

Professor of Mathematics Colin Adams echoed Shaddock’s concerns. “My main concern about accommodations is that when we have students with accommodations (which is now always) with time and a half or double time and low distraction rooms, then we are sometimes covering two or three rooms during an exam,” Adams wrote in an email to the Record. “Because it has now become so easy to cheat using AI on a phone, we should not be leaving students alone, but because of accommodations, we have to. The College needs to figure out a way to deal with this problem.”

Vi Beauchan ’28, who has extended time for test taking, among other accommodations, echoed Adams’ concerns about academic integrity in these non-proctored rooms. “I do know students with real disabilities who abuse their specific accommodations, i.e., cheat on tests if they’re allowed to take them in a separate room,” she wrote in an email to the Record.

Other professors have expressed similar concerns about fairness. “I have seen a large uptick in students without accommodations asking how the average grades on exams compare for students with and without accommodations,” Professor of Economics Greg Phelan wrote in an email to the Record. “It’s a question that puts instructors in an awkward position.”

Evans acknowledged that faculty have concerns about accommodation-related cheating, “There’s going to be some folks with accommodations who maybe take advantage of that separate testing area,” she said. 

Evans stressed, however, that cheating is a problem among all students, not just those with accommodations. “I [don’t want to suggest] that students with accommodations are somehow using their accommodations to cheat in ways that students without accommodations aren’t,” she said. “You’re going to see cheating across the board.”

Beauchan said that for her and other students, academic accommodations are essential. “If more people get As because of their accommodations, I honestly don’t care,” she said. “There are a million ways for people to cheat… a pathway that makes disabled students’ lives a lot more accessible at Williams shouldn’t be the first thing to be cracked down on.”

Shaddock said that he doesn’t believe students request accommodations in order to cheat or gain an advantage over their peers, but that it is easier for students with accommodations to cheat. “I think there’s probably about the same percentage of students trying to cheat with accommodations as without accommodations,” he said. “If you make it crazy easy for students with accommodations to cheat, they’re going to.”

According to Evans, OAE is currently working on implementing a centralized, proctored testing center, similar to a space at Bowdoin. Gabe Silverman, a first-year at Bowdoin with an accommodation for extra test-taking time, appreciates the centralized system. “There are never issues with academic integrity at the test center because it’s always proctored,” he told the Record. “So teachers know it’s not really possible to cheat at all when taking the exam in the test center.”

Evans does not see academic accommodations as an advantage, but as an opportunity to level the academic playing field for all students. “Accommodations are really for access… [they’re] about supporting students’ access to the Williams experience as it’s designed,” Evans said. 

Any accommodations that OAE approves are not without forethought, Evans said. “We don’t take lightly modifications to any courses or assignments, because it’s really important that students, regardless of ability status, get to participate in Williams courses as designed by the faculty,” she said.