Services for Students with Learning Disabilities at Two- and Four-Year Institutions: Are They Different?

Abstract

Many adults with learning disabilities (LD) are beginning to take advantage of the range of postsecondary options available to them. Section 504 of the Rehabilitation Act of 1973, which provides equal access and appropriate academic adjustments to "otherwise qualified" students with LD, has encouraged the rapid growth in the numbers of these students attending postsecondary institutions. Additionally, the recent passage of the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) (1990) further reinforces Section 504.Students with LD are successfully attending two-year colleges in increasing numbers, and they are also realizing that four-year colleges and universities are a viable postsecondary option (Shaw, McGuire, & Brinckerhoff, 1994). Henderson (1992) found that the category of learning disabilities had the highest growth rate among all categories of disabilities in postsecondary education settings. Approximately 25% of all first-time, full-time freshmen who reported having a disability in 1991 had a learning disability. These students now make up approximately 2.2% of the total freshman class (Henderson, 1992).

Accommodation Strategies of College Students with Disabilities

“…As a result, the students (with and without disabilities) who attend a university with these characteristics may be different than students who would attend a two-year institution. For instance, a student with a disability may selfselect to attend a two-year community college over a larger, four-year university in order to have a more nurturing environment (Bigaj & Shaw, 1995). Another limitation of the current study concerns our data collection methods.…”

Measuring College Students’ Attitudes Toward Requesting Accommodations: A National Multi-Institutional Study

“…For instance, female students with disabilities may have more negative attitudes toward requesting accommodations when it comes to issues of academic integrity, feeling as if receiving accommodations was indicative of a lack of academic integrity. Future research should explore the interaction of demographic characteristics with these attitudes toward requesting accommodations among college students with disabilities along with considering institutional variables such as 2-year versus 4-year institutions as indicating by Bigaj and Shaw (1995). Finally, future research should consider the use of the ATRA by secondary education teachers to identify students with disabilities who may not be likely to request accommodations, thus developing interventions for these students as early as possible.…”

Learning to Achieve: A Review of the Research Literature on Serving Adults with Learning Disabilities

“…Of all the services provided to college students with LD, some form of tutoring is the service most often provided (Bigaj, Shaw, Cullen, McGuire, & Yost, 1995;Keim, Whirter, & Bernstein, 1996;Mohr, 1991;Vogel, Hruby, & Adelman, 1993;Zaritsky, 1989). The usual outcome of this service is immediate success.…”