Disability discrimination in higher education: analyzing the quality of counseling services

ABSTRACT

We conduct a field experiment to analyze barriers disabled students face when entering higher education institutions. Fictitious high-school graduates request information regarding the admission process and special accommodations to ease studying. Potential applicants randomly reveal one of four impairment types. Response rates are similar for all four conditions. Evaluating response contents reveals differential treatment by impairment type. Students with depression or dyslexia are provided less information and services compared to students with physical impairments or students with no disability. Our results suggest that general information deficits about health conditions exist. Psychological and learning impairments are less often recognized as disabilities.

KEYWORDS:

• Higher education
• disability discrimination
• correspondence experiment

JEL CLASSIFICATION:

• I14
• I23

Acknowledgements

We thank Reto Föllmi, Per Johannson, Michael Lechner and seminar participants at the University of St. Gallen, the University of Passau, the 2014 Society of Labor Economics Conference, the 2014 Meeting of the Economics of Education Association and the 2014 Workshop on Applied Economics of Education for helpful comments.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes

1. The economic literature typically focuses on primary or secondary education, e.g. by considering the effects of providing financial incentives to schools and placing disabled students in special education (e.g. Kwak 2010; Dhuey and Lipscomb 2011; Battisti, Friesen, and Hickey 2012). Other studies evaluate interventions for children with special needs or peer effects among disabled and non-disabled students in inclusive school systems (e.g. Hanushek, Kain, and Rivkin 2002; Fletcher 2009; Friesen, Hickey, and Krauth 2010; Heckman et al. 2010; McGee 2011; Andrews, Jargowsky, and Kuhne 2012; Keslair, Maurin, and McNally 2012; Iversen, Bonesroenning, and Pettersen 2013). Less is known about post-secondary education. Notable exceptions are Jolls (2004) and Polidano and Mavromaras (2011), who study access to vocational education, or Cheatham and Elliott (2013) who look at individual incentives for disabled students to enroll in college.

2. See e.g. the recommendation from the German National Association for Student Affairs at http://www.studentenwerke.de.

3. A representative survey of students at German universities revealed that 45% of students with a disability have a mental illness (most often depression), 20% have a chronic somatic illness, 6% have a learning impairment (most often dyslexia), 5% have a visual impairment, and 4% have a mobility impairment (Unger et al. 2012). Despite the low prevalence, a physical handicap requiring a wheelchair remains the stereotype for a disability in society (Sapey, Stewart, and Donaldson 2004). We refrained from including mobility or visual impairments in our study because they require very different accommodations mostly with respect to infrastructure.

4. The list can be found at https://www.hrk.de/mitglieder/mitgliedshochschulen/ [last accessed April 2017].

5. Table A4 also shows a positive depression coefficient for disadvantage compensation. Looking at the email contents, we find that the keyword is often used in negation. Counselors are more likely to signal a refusal of disadvantage compensation when the student suffers from a psychological disease compared to a physical sickness. In some cases, counselors even mention that disadvantage compensations are only granted for students suffering from physical sickness or that depression is not recognized as a disability (even though this is in violation of official legislation).

6. For example, language skills have been shown to be strongly associated with academic success (Zeegers 2004).