This week’s report shows that college students across the United States USAAs many as 40 percent of students, including those at Stanford University, claim to have a disability in order to receive special accommodations, such as more time on exams, prompting pushback from education experts.

The latest data shows that According to the Atlantic Monthlyat schools such as Brown and Harvard, more than 20% of undergraduates now register as disabled. In Amherst, that number reached 34%. But professors warn this isn’t a surge in physical injuries. Instead, it’s a wave of students being diagnosed with “questionable” disabilities like ADHD, anxiety, and dyslexia, and with them comes coveted perks: extra testing time and better campus housing.

“She’s certainly not disabled,” a Stanford University student wrote in the Sunday Times One article suggested that 40% of Stanford students claim to be “disabled.”

“She knew it. I knew it too. But she figured out early on what most Stanford students end up learning: that the Office of Accessible Education would provide students with single rooms, extra testing time, and even exemptions from academic requirements if they qualified as ‘disabled.'”

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A young man sitting at a classroom table covering his face with his hands, looking stressed and overwhelmed in class (Canart7/iStock)

Fox News Digital spoke with several education experts who said the U.S. school system college Students with genuine disabilities will be harmed the most by abuse.

“College students with genuine disabilities, like me, are being overlooked by people who are trying to make it as easy as possible for themselves in what is often a rigorous college environment due to lack of preparation in high school or other reasons,” Sarah Parshall Perry, vice president and legal fellow at Defending Education, told Fox News Digital.

“The fact that we are seeing a surge in students with ‘disabilities’ is evidence that the youngest generations are ill-prepared for life in the real world.”

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Stanford, CA: Stanford University Campus. (Photo by David Buteau/Corbis via Getty Images)

Erika Sanzi, senior director of communications for Defend Education, told Fox News Digital that the story “reflects our perverse incentive structures that encourage students to claim identity labels that carry special accommodations, even if they do not have a true disability.”

The “games” with the system don’t stop with medical claims. The Sunday Times also reported on a trend of students who claim to be subject to “religious dietary restrictions” opting out of Stanford’s mandatory $7,944-a-year meal plan.

Dr. Zachary Marschall, a professor at the University of Kentucky and editor-in-chief of Campus Reform, told Fox News Digital: “Reasonable accommodations rightly exist to ensure equal opportunity for all students.”

“However, feeling uncomfortable is not a disability, and planning for a separate dorm or easier testing conditions is unreasonable. This trend is symptomatic of Gen Z’s toxic right to feel comfortable, which higher education fulfills by meeting students’ self-centered expectations.”

Fox News Digital reached out to Brown University and Harvard University for comment.

In a statement to Fox News Digital, Stanford said the recent media investigation “has prompted us to take a deeper look at our federal reporting practices.”

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“We have determined that our previous practices did not accurately reflect the number of students who actually received accommodations, and we will correct this in future IPEDS reports,” the statement said. “The previously reported number (38% in 2023) reflected students who were solely enrolled in the Office of Accessible Education (OAE) during a given year’s course, rather than students who received academic accommodations. The number of students who received academic accommodations was less than half the number reported. Fall 2025, 12.5% of undergraduate students received academic accommodations.”