Should colleges and grad schools have special services?

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Apples and oranges...

Schools/universities are there to provide you an education and help you learn. They DO NOT give a s**t if your degree has any application in the real world, if you know how to get "a job" in the real world or if there are any jobs in the real world with your degree.

When I was a tutor in SPED services in university, a good 80% of my clients would never score a competitive market place job once they graduated. They wouldn't survive an interview. They too way too long to learn things. They had multiple doctor's appointments and health issues. Mental health issues.

While a university will give you open ended testing time, not happening at most jobs. While the TA must late your late lab reports, most likely the division head of your chemistry lab job will not.

There are people with multiple issues that are Bill Gates brillant, but they are very few and far between. Companies will put up with weird if you make them money. They'll tell your cranky co workers to deal if you make them mega money. The minute you cost them money, they'll broom you.

I think the problem is people equated university as job preparation. It isn't. It's for you to get an education. Oh, the university might throw some token job placement crap, but it's works for people who probably wouldn't have a problem with getting a job anyway.

Every person in my husband's support group has at least one college degree and over half have multiples. Degree does not equal employment. All are unemployed/on disability.

So I have no problem with people getting support, but they need to realize that is not usually the real world.

Colleges today definitely care about students gaining employment. If a college has a poor record for students gaining future employment that is online for everyone to see. Internships are a big business, employers want see mutiple internships and participation in multiple clubs/activitivies on your resume.

Back then a degree pretty much guaranteed a decent job for those NT's who made an effort to get one. Of course there were exceptions. There is the old joke about actors waiting tables but if you were waiting tables you had a job (I do not understand how an autistic can last more then few hours doing that).

I had a completly blind English professor. With the exception of a few jokes that would be seen as politically incorrect today for most part the students treated him respectfully and did not try and take advantage. I do not remember any ramps and wheelchair bound students were rare. Buses did not have lifts.

My school experience is different then many older autistics here, I never missed class and graduated on time. The only reasons to miss class was something like a death in the family or an illness like the flu. Not showing up to school or work because you were out late the night before and were hung over or you had "the snifles", or were stressed out, are you kidding me? My first two years of college were a nightmare of gaslighting bullying and poor grades because I was in in a s**t college due to mediocre high school grades. People were drunk and stoned out of there minds and that made it very noisy all the time. Somehow the last semester I got high enough grades to get into a decent college for my last two years. There is talk of people "losing thier diagnosis" or the autism traits becoming so mild as to not meet the diagnostic criteria. That was probably me starting the last two years of college and for the next 15 years or so. But eventually it would catch up to me in a big way because I am autistic.

Having a notetaker? Maybe I would have gotten A's in courses I got B's in or maybe I would have gotten a C because the notetaker was a distraction who knows. A quieter environment definitely would have helped even in my "less autistic" days.

Last edited by ASPartOfMe on 12 May 2017, 10:45 am, edited 1 time in total.

I have written prevoiusly about how bad the hiring process and job requirements are for autistics. While colleges today have loads of job prep they are NT oriented and thus do not teach autistic students what to expect and coping mechanisms. The problem of colleges teaching students the opposite of what is needed to function in the real world is a general problem that probably hurts autistic students even more.

Wow, that is so great. I had so many meltdowns my whole time at uni. I must have had well over 50. I even got a concussion from a headbang meltdown at uni once. Everyone just expected me to be able to do what all the other students were doing and if I had trouble they just criticized or reprimanded me. I was capable of getting fantastic grades. I made dean's list every semester despite my issues. If I had had just a little bit of consideration, I wonder if I could have graduated and possibly even magna or suma.