This reality is playing out on campus. More college students are seeking medical evaluation ADHD, anxietyand frustrated— and require academic adjustments, such as extended time for exams and papers. In some major universities in the United States, this figure is astonishing: more than 20% of undergraduates at Brown University and Harvard University are registered as disabled. The ratio is 34% at UMass Amherst and 38% at Stanford, according to data analyzed by UMass Amherst. atlantic.
While it’s clear that many students request accommodations for legitimate medical reasons, and the increase in diagnoses may reflect increased mental health awareness, some experts are concerned overdiagnosis and whether universities are making it too easy for students to qualify. The debate has rocked social media this week, drawing attention from prominent business leaders, including Joe Lonsdalebillionaire venture capitalist and co-founder of Palantir.
Lonsdale’s response showed no sympathy. “The failed generation”, he wrote The chart shows an increasing number of undergraduate students reporting disabilities.
“At Stanford, this was a hack for housing, and at some point I understood it, even if it wasn’t my personal morals. The leadership of the university is terrible.”
He believes families have been slowly using disability accommodations to give their children an academic advantage — even though they may not actually need the advantage.
“In the 2010s, claiming that your child has a disability, thereby providing assistance to them, became an apparently dominant game theory strategy for dishonorable parents,” Lonsdale wrote earlier this month X. “This is a good sign to avoid families like this/don’t do business with parents who do this.”
While it’s unclear how many students, if any, try to game the system, Lonsdale has made his broader point clear: He believes universities are not developing young people or assessing them in important ways.
“No great company is interested in the crap that colleges play,” he additional.
wealth Lonsdale was contacted for further comment.
Lonsdale’s complex history of higher education
Although Lonsdale himself is a Stanford alumnus, he has a complicated history with the institution and higher education more broadly.
In the early 2010s, while serving as an instructor for Stanford University’s technology entrepreneurship course, Lonsdale defendant student sexual assault and was banned from mentoring undergraduate students for 10 years and banned from campus altogether. The assault charge is Later gave upbut Lonsdale admitted breaching rules prohibiting consensual relationships between tutors and students.
Less than a decade later, in 2021, Lonsdale co-founded his own school— University of Austin-and Niall Ferguson, Barry Weissand others. The institution prides itself on free speech and overcoming the “mediocrity” of traditional higher education. It welcomed its first undergraduate class last fall, but still has no accreditation.
The school is backed by Lonsdale’s Palantir co-founder and Stanford University alumnus Alex Karphe also criticized the academy system.
“Everything you learn in school and college about how the world works is intellectually wrong,” Palantir CEO Karp said. CNBC earlier this year.
The 58-year-old said Palantir is building a new credential that is “not tied to class or background” and is “the best credential in tech.”
“If you didn’t go to school, or you went to a not-so-great school, or you went to Harvard or Princeton or Yale, once you come to Palantir, you’re a Palantir,” Karp said on an earnings call earlier this year. “Nobody cares about anything else.”