Last week, the Stanford junior Elsa Johnson revealed in The Times that many of her fellow students were claiming they were disabled to receive accommodations like extra time on tests, excused absences and the best housing on campus. Johnson admitted that she had used her own endometriosis diagnosis to secure housing and academic perks.
“The truth is, the system is there to be gamed,” she wrote, “and most students feel that if you are not gaming it, you are putting yourself at a disadvantage.”
The result? We are gradually teaching young people corruption under the guise of compassion.
Just look at the numbers. According to the National Center for Education Statistics, 18 per cent of male and 22 per cent of female college undergraduates report having a disability. Among non-binary students the figure jumps to 54 per cent. The figures are especially striking at elite universities.
Writing in The Atlantic, Rose Horowitch reported that more than 20 per cent of undergrads at Brown University and Harvard University were registered as disabled. At Amherst College the figure exceeded 30 per cent. At Stanford it approached 40 per cent. The rise is sharpest at the most selective schools, with only 3 to 4 per cent of students receiving accommodations at community colleges.
In her piece, Johnson argued that anyone who did not cheat was putting themselves at a disadvantage. “Stanford has made gaming the system the logical choice,” she wrote. “The students are not exactly cheating and if they are, can you blame them?” Yes, you can.
Something has shifted about American attitudes towards rules, especially among members of Gen Z. A 2020 survey from the American Enterprise Institute found that relative to older adults, young people are less likely to agree with the statement: “It is more important to always follow the rules even if it means you may be less successful.” At the same time, young people are more likely to say it is acceptable to get ahead even if it requires bending or breaking the rules. The trend points towards a lower-trust society, where rules are seen less as shared guardrails and more as inconvenient obstacles to work around.
The Atlantic reported that some elite schools may soon have more students receiving disability accommodations than those who don’t. A decade ago this would have sounded absurd, but as students and parents have come to recognise the benefits of disability status — extended test time, flexible deadlines, priority housing — the numbers have surged.
Many educated elites have long excused rule-breaking among people in more disadvantaged communities, arguing that the system is stacked against them — so why wouldn’t they try to level the playing field? Now, bizarrely, they are extending that same moral leniency to themselves.
The irony is that students at America’s elite universities are among the most privileged people to have ever lived. Admission alone places them among the future leadership class. Yet once inside the gates their advantage-hunting continues, with many searching for new ways to climb higher.
And today victimhood can function as a strategy. It can open doors, unlock resources and confer moral authority.
A 2021 paper in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology supports this, showing that victim status can elevate one’s social standing in modern Western societies, increasing sympathy, expanding influence and justifying claims for material support.
The study showed that people with “dark triad” traits such as narcissism, Machiavellianism and psychopathy were more likely to attempt to acquire resources through victim claims. But beyond the scope of the study, it is also possible that habitually framing oneself as disadvantaged can cultivate narcissism, manipulativeness and disregard for others. Behaviour shapes mindset just as much as mindset shapes behaviour.
As a result America’s elite-education system is vulnerable to exploitation, especially among those who have the knowledge and resources to navigate it. A 2019 investigation found that many affluent parents had paid thousands of dollars for private psychological testing. These clinicians face a built-in incentive: families are customers, and a diagnosis of ADHD or anxiety can deliver academic advantages. A decade ago, as an undergraduate at Yale, I learnt that several students were claiming to be “dyslexic” to successfully skip compulsory language-course requirements. All were from well-off backgrounds.
The system offers perverse incentives that are difficult to resist — unless you are a person of immense character.
Years ago, a friend I served with the US Air Force was injured on the job. His injury was real but temporary. He knew, as many veterans do, that disability claims had been rising — such incentives are not confined to elite college students, but extend to former service members as well. He could easily have applied for long-term benefits upon discharge, but he chose not to. As soon as he recovered, he returned to work. He wanted to put the experience behind him rather than organise his life around it.
He went on to do well. But for hundreds of thousands of others the incentive to exaggerate one’s difficulties is too tempting — especially in a culture that offers excuses and asks: “How can you blame them?”
In the end, this all comes with a hidden cost. Institutions meant to cultivate excellence are training students to find advantage in fragility. And the habits and values learnt on the college campus rarely stay there. Eventually our culture will adopt these values, as we increasingly turn into a society of grift.
This article was originally published in the Times of London under the title “The Stanford scam proves America is becoming a nation of grifters.”