Legal Issues and Academic Accommodations in Higher Education

Colleges and universities are quite familiar with the academic and other needs of students with disabilities and most do an excellent job working with this population of students. However, students with autism differ from students with other disabilities in that their pervasive struggles present throughout all aspects of the higher education experience including cognitive, social, and regulatory domains. For most college personnel (faculty, administrators, and staff) the challenges lie in understanding that students with autism need to make a great effort to manage their social, executive, and self-regulatory functioning. College is a period of independence for all students but those who have difficulty establishing meaningful social interactions may especially be at risk. This chapter reviews some of the basis legal underpinnings of disability service in higher education and aims to better prepare colleges to improve service provision to students with autism. Most students with autism will have few (if any) conduct issues, however, for others, challenging behaviors can emerge on campus and in class. This is often due to inherent difficulty with communication, including processing verbal and nonverbal cues, understanding and anticipating social situations (“reading between the lines”), and identifying and extrapolating information/directions that are both implicit and explicit in nature. In class, students with autism may ask many questions, hold rigid or inflexible opinions, correct the professor, and/or monopolize the discussion. Elsewhere on campus interpersonal challenges and violation of behavioral and conduct codes can arise from lack of awareness of social norms, poor social skills, and social anxiety. Students on the autism spectrum who have spent their K-12 school career under the protective cloak of special education can encounter marked challenges as they transition to college, partly due to the change in applicable laws (from the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act to the Americans with Disabilities Act). Behavioral issues often create the most challenging scenarios for families who are accustomed to special education where consequences for infractions may be excused under a loophole called “manifestation determination” which does not exist in college.