Stuck Between a Rock and a Hard Place: Exploring the Lived Experiences of College Students Who Do Not Request Accommodations

Abstract

v you a friend. To my remaining dissertation committee members: Dr. Dawn Hunter, I appreciate the time you took with me to ensure I was aware of journals and organizations related to higher education. To Dr. Michael Madrid, I say thank you for your answering my many questions and providing endless writing support. I thank Mr. Jason McAlexander for the time spent discussing and answering questions related to disclosure and documentation policy in higher education. As well, I thank Dr. Susan Gabel for the early conversations that challenged me to align my vocabulary with the social model of disability. I also thank Dr. Barbara Tye for your continued encouragement and invaluable instruction on the many lenses by which to view the world. I thank the staff of Leatherby Libraries, specifically Brett Fisher, David Goto, Lugen Rosen, and Jessica Bower for their continued efforts in making the library and resources accessible. To Andrea Tedford-Killian and Jason McAlexander, I want to express my gratitude for your professionalism and timely response when adapting my printed books and articles. Lastly, but definitely not least, I thank Dr. Marni Fisher and Mrs. Kay Henry for proofreading my dissertation. vi ABSTRACT Stuck Between a Rock and a Hard Place: Exploring the Lived Experiences of College Students Who Do Not Request Accommodations by Denise P. Reid For this phenomenological study, thirteen participants from two private universities located in the western region of the United States shared their lived experiences of being a college student who does not request accommodations. The author used recursive analysis to analyze qualitative data from semi-structured interviews. Initial codes were combined to create interconnected families of codes. A second level of analysis resulted in seven spaces in which participants describe their lived experiences. Findings suggest participants experience various tensions, ranging from incompatible options to competing perspectives, as they negotiate their identity and environment, including the principle of opportunity cost. Recommendations for college administrators and faculty, including Universal Design in higher education are included.

Disability and diversity on CSU websites: A critical discourse study.

“…Yet disabled students are often invisible on college campuses, in part because many do not self-identify as disabled by contacting the cam-pus disability services office (Low, 1996;Miskovic & Gabel, 2012;Prowse, 2009;Reid, 2014). Reid's (2014) exploration of the lived experiences of college students in California who do not request accommodations revealed 79% of participants did not self-identify as disabled by contacting the disability services office. In California, Ͻ1% of students in 4-year IHEs identify as disabled (California Postsecondary Education Commission, 2009) in spite of the face that the U.S. Department of Education (U.S. DOE, 2013a, 2013b) reports a 10.9% enrollment nationwide.…”