Students with learning disabilities drop out of high school at more than double the typical rate (NSBA, 2019). While over 60% of students go to college, about 5% of those with learning disabilities do. Over 15 million students are in college in the U.S. (Hanson, 2024).
Learning disabilities (LD) include dyslexia (reading difficulty), dysgraphia (writing difficulty), and dyscalculia (math difficulty). Schools provide additional support through special education, but the intervention programs used are so costly that they may not be offered to all students with LD.
Therefore, the small number of students with LD who get admitted to college is not surprising. This group has two huge hurdles to overcome: keeping up with academics in high school so as not to drop out and managing well enough in college to graduate. The stakes are high: Those with a college degree earn $1 million more over their lifetime on average than those with just a high school diploma (Anthony, 2021).
High School Hurdle: The High Cost of Compensatory Interventions
While 1 in 5 students has dyslexia, because of cost, lack of teacher resources, and ineffective methods, fewer than 1 in 10 receive special services (NCES, 2024). Special ed costs more than $10,000 a year for a single student in Ohio, $15,000 in California, and $20,000 in Massachusetts (Cornman et al., 2022). This is in addition to a comparable amount for general ed.
The Department of Education’s What Works Clearinghouse does not contain any intervention program that consistently gets students with dyslexia to read on grade level after third grade. As many of these programs in special ed merely help struggling readers cope, the same cost may be incurred throughout their school years. Thus, the same ineffective interventions are given to the same group of students year after year, while the remaining pupils with LD are denied special services.
With or without special ed, neither group is consistently able to pass reading, writing, and/or math. Academic struggles often create a plethora of negative effects, such as defeatism and behavioral and psychosocial problems. Some students with LD report being victims of bullying.
College Hurdle: Even Higher Costs of Tuition and Anxiety
Students with LD who do get into college have to overcome new obstacles. For disabilities in general, almost 4 in 10 students affected drop out of college (Anthony, 2021). As with the general population, racial disparities exist. For four-year public colleges, Black students have the lowest six-year completion rate (45.9%) compared to White (67.2%).
Just for four years alone, the average cost is over $100,000 for attending an in-state public college, $180,000 for out-of-state, and $230,000 for private, nonprofit universities. If a student does not graduate after even six years, the investment in terms of money, time, and effort has indeed been too much.
Learning disabilities often coexist with other disorders such as ADHD and anxiety. Roughly 32% of undergraduates have anxiety disorders, which means about 1 in 3 college students suffers from anxiety (Anthony, 2022). As teens have to deal with greater academic demands in college and the stress of independent living, the effects of their disabilities often get amplified.
Through my experience as a college professor, I have seen up close how and why these undergraduates drop out. At the beginning of the semester, they may start off with a plan on how to manage academic work, with the assurance of assistive tools and support from the college’s office of special services.
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As the semester progresses, they face challenges academically and psychosocially as the work gets harder. Some of them start to participate less and less actively in class. Those who skip class may fall into a vicious cycle where it becomes increasingly difficult for them to keep up. As their anxiety amplifies, they find it even more difficult to show up for class, especially when they are now lost as to what the professor and their classmates are talking about. At this point, these students usually drop out of the course. If they do so for several courses over several semesters, then dropping out of college becomes even more likely.
Navigating the School-to-College Transition
The Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA) stipulates the use of transition services for students with disabilities. These services are aimed at strengthening not just students’ academic skills but also their ability to function well overall when they get to college.
However, when pupils transition to college, the IDEA, which mandates free and appropriate intervention for students with disabilities in school, is replaced by the Rehabilitation Act and the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA).
In transitioning out of IDEA, undergraduates have to self-disclose their disabilities to their professors, provide documentation, and self-advocate for appropriate accommodations. Some students may not feel comfortable disclosing their disabilities due to perceived stigma.
SUNY Canton junior Megan Cowles used the Dysolve AI program to clear her dyslexia before college.
Source: Courtesy of Karen Cowles
Using AI to Overcome Traditional Hurdles
From a college’s perspective, it makes economic sense to support undergrads with LD due to hefty recruitment costs and losses from dropouts. This is especially important given the shrinking enrollment pool caused by shifting demographics.
Solutions to some of these obstacles may be found in new AI technologies. Obvious examples are language-based technologies that can support reading- and writing-intensive coursework as well as literature review for research papers.
But more substantive support may come from AI advancements that address students’ disabilities more directly. Because K-12 schools presently cannot serve all students with LD, many undergrads may not even have been diagnosed before college. Those who seek a specialist’s diagnosis have to pay around $5,000 to $10,000 on their own. Diagnostic and treatment costs would be considerably lower with scalable, AI-driven programs.
The first such AI program is already available in the market. State University of New York students Megan Cowles, Dominic Marasco, and Meghan Odell used Dysolve AI to clear their reading difficulties before college. It is the only autonomous AI intervention for learning disabilities, but expect more AI solutions to come for other disabilities.