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Stanford's Fake Disability Crisis Is America's Future
- imemyself 9mo agoThe scam here is pretty clearly Stanford having a mandatory $8000 per year meal plan. There's no legitimate reason for that.
- CodingJeebus 9mo agoExactly. It's terrible to frame the "third-worldification" based on how the consumer (or student) behaves in this case. It's only "cheating" when consumers act in their own self interest, but not when a powerful university like Stanford puts a mandatory meal plan in place. Institutions are always permitted to act in the own self-interest, but not individuals. Always just blame the little people.
- learingsci 9mo agoKitchen staff need to pay Bay Area rents. Should we replace the cooks with h1b’s too?
- imemyself 9mo agoWhy should students be required to pay them if they don’t want their food?
- learingsci 9mo ago[flagged]
- NedF 9mo ago[dead]
- CodingJeebus 9mo ago> The gaming doesn’t stop at disability. Stanford requires undergrads to purchase an $7,944 annual meal plan—unless they claim a religious dietary restriction the cafeteria can’t accommodate. Isn’t the mandatory meal plan also a game by the university? A really frustrating trend I’ve seen more companies do nowadays is to tack on mandatory charges for crap that I don’t need or want, and it’s happening everywhere. If declaring a disability is what it takes to get out of a compulsory meal charge, then it’s worth examining why the school feels compelled to make the meal plan mandatory in the first place. It’s not just students or consumers playing a game, companies (or universities in this case) are playing one too, and it’s called: how to get as much money out of our customers as possible.
- lux-lux-lux 9mo agoThat’s because it’s smart business when you abuse your captive customer base, totally different thing. When pesky customers do the same back to you, well, time to complain about the ‘third worldification of American institutions,’ or something.
- ameliaquining 9mo agoIn Tan's partial defense, I don't think he would be complaining about "third worldification of American institutions" just over evasion of meal-plan rent-seeking. The original, much higher-profile story was about the failure modes of using the disability accommodations process to allocate broadly desirable things that are rivalrous or positional (as opposed to narrowly-scoped accommodations), and then Tan tacked on a tangent about the meal-plan thing because it has surface similarities and also doesn't make the students look great, without considering whether it's really an instance of the same core issue.
- CodingJeebus 9mo agoPeople are going to act to further their economic position. Water is wet. There's an entire misalignment of economic incentives in that world that he just completely glosses over in favor of "third-worldification".
- direwolf20 9mo agoOh like people who claim they need all the GPU and RAM supply to save the world
- UncleMeat 9mo agoRemember that Garry Tan believes in a largely illiberal society where our institutions are organized around CEOs rather than democratic control. Of course the people exist to be turned into goo to be extracted as dollar bills.
- FireBeyond 9mo agoYeah, my step-daughter is a vegetarian. She cannot opt out of the several thousand dollar a year meal plan at her college despite the campus dining facilities having often only one not-particularly-good vegetarian option (I'm not vegetarian but when visiting I've tried the options). So we're left with paying her credit card to buy groceries and a largely unused meal plan. > it’s worth examining why the school feels compelled to make the meal plan mandatory in the first place. Well, that's often because Aramark and Chartwells (Compass) require that in their contracts. My partner is the Accounting Manager for another university in our state and that's mandated in their contract (along with other clauses like "any event on campus must be offered to us for catering first, and we will either cater it or decline, and only then can you use another caterer"). There can be debates on why that is allowed in the negotiation, though.
- ChrisArchitect 9mo agoRelated: Why are 38 percent of Stanford students saying they're disabled? https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46150715 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46150715 Accomodation Nation https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/2026/01/elite-university-student-accommodation/684946/ https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/2026/01/elite-universit...
- deleted 9mo ago[deleted]
- UncleMeat 9mo agoTo be clear, the evidence here is that one student tweeted and that many more Stanford students have a registered disability (which doesn't not even mean that they are receiving accommodations) than students at community colleges. For me to buy this moral panic I need to see more compelling evidence. Can we see the students that clearly are getting undeserved accommodations? That is the actual thing people are worried about. But zero of the articles whinging about this can point to data here. Could it be, I dunno, that rich students are vastly more likely to have access to the medical system that can identify and document various things like ADHD?
- the_real_cher 9mo ago[flagged]
- kylehotchkiss 9mo ago> So according to the theory there will be an inverse correlation between high trust society and the presence of white people. How do you explain Singapore? South Korea? Japan?
- the_real_cher 9mo agoThese are good questions. You have found three outliers out of 193 countries. It still really doesn't disprove the theory that 100% of white western civilization founded countries have people trying to immigrate to them whereas outside of a tiny handful the rest of the countries have zero immigration problems. All of these countries need to be studied for what behaviors and cultures create high trust first world style societies.
- bdhe 9mo ago> 100% of white western civilization Do the republics in the Caucasus region (and Russia) count in this calculation or not?
- kylehotchkiss 9mo agoAlbania (1.7% immigrant), Bosnia (1.1%), Moldova (2.6%), Poland(3.6%), Slovakia(3.6%). Additionally, I wouldn't consider UK to be "high trust" these days either. I don't blame that on immigration, but economic contraction. I can't tell if you're serious or just saber rattling. I know better than to engage with this type of stuff on Reddit, but I like to think people in the HN space are more methodical than this.
- gizajob 9mo agoImmigration is a small part of the issue for sure, but in the UK it was Thatcherism and the legacy of it which did in the high trust. Plus it was a country of half full of pirates and thieves anyway.
- watwut 9mo agoHaving registered disability is not the same as getting generous accommodations. The article has no data on accommodations themselves. At best, it has a few anecdotes about rooms allocations. I am totally fine with people avoiding expensive or bad meal plan. The fact that you have to pay for an expensive or bad meal plan should be the scandal, not the fact that students avoid it. And I am even fine with accommodation from class participation. Too much of it is activity for points only which wastes everybody's time.
- kotaKat 9mo agoRoom allocations - from what I understand, there is a pre-assignment process for housing. Students are “gaming the system” by getting access to buildings in specific locations (to lower their campus commute times) or by forcing single occupancy for themselves in 2+ occupancy dorms (which then creates a housing crunch elsewhere as you might end up with a triple or a quad elsewhere to compensate for it).
- kylehotchkiss 9mo agoI agree the US is trending towards third-world mentalities. Statistics aren't good. >50% of Americans now see homeownership as out of reach. Studies keep cropping up stating at 30-40% of young Americans will never marry. Never mind that many people need to pass 5-10 rounds of interviews to get a junior level role. This all seems to stem from one demographics greed or another. Our parents generation and suppressing housing builds. The corporations using monopolies of dating applications which at this point seem to be suppressing relationship formulation more than increasing it. The political classes using tariffs for unclear purposes to shrink our economy. https://www.equimundo.org/wp-content/uploads/2025/06/State-of-American-Men-2025.pdf https://www.equimundo.org/wp-content/uploads/2025/06/State-o...
- datsci_est_2015 9mo agoDoesn’t the “third world” (maybe better referred to as the “Global South” now that the Berlin Wall has fallen) has very high marriage rates? Models of home ownership are probably different enough to be incomparable to what it is the US. Nevermind mortgages, but things like running water as well. I would almost imagine “apprenticeship” is much more common and healthy (“junior roles”) in a lot of the more prosperous places in the Global South as well.
- joe_mamba 9mo agoI think by "third world mentalities" he just means devolving into "fuck you, I got mine" low trust societies where everyone is stealing and scamming everyone else because there's no upwards mobility, no social contract where hard work and honesty gets you ahead, it's either scam or be scammed by unscrupulous people who will take advantage of your hard work and trust in the system against you, so that they can get ahead and then rug-pull you. I see the same sentiment from his comment on young people everywhere in the developed west US, Canda, EU, Australia, etc.
- j-bos 9mo agoI like to say low trust-worthiness societies. High trust societies are often exploited by con artists and the like who if sufficient then become low trust.
- knowitnone3 9mo ago[dead]
- Beijinger 9mo agoConsider studying abroad: https://www.gmexconsulting.com/cms/chinas-top-universities-are-opening-to-foreign-students-thats-a-big-problem-for-us-schools/ https://www.gmexconsulting.com/cms/chinas-top-universities-a... I am back in the US. And it is not looking good. Don't put all the eggs in one basket.
- mrDmrTmrJ 9mo agoAwesome article. Please read the entire thing. Gary takes a well-deserved shot at the US false use of "third‑worldification" as a stand in for "our own low-trust society". This crap will only stop when there is: 1. A ton of new housing for all people. 2. Treat everyone the same. Same amount of test time etc. Otherwise, our society is just a race to see who can claim the most special 'privilege' via some form of 'issue' or 'need'. It would be great to see detailed demographic breakdowns of exactly who's making these heavy special-privilege claims, as the details may surprise a variety of commentators on this forum. Though I don't think Gary has access to that data.
- direwolf20 9mo agoTest time shouldn't be an issue if the test is designed well and you learned the material. I'd support unlimited test time, but the proctor won't sit there forever so it won't work.
- freitasm 9mo agoCan't read because someone on that website thinks Opera is "not acceptable": "Not acceptable. Your browser is not supported. Please upgrade your browser to continue."
- direwolf20 9mo agoWhich opera? The new one is spyware.
- freitasm 9mo agoOpera Mobile.
- clueless 9mo ago> When the system rewards cheating, the rational choice is to cheat—or be disadvantaged. Doesn't the current president of the U.S. and indeed his posse sorta of espouse this when you look at their backgrounds? This feels like a bigger cultural issue around what the advantaged folks have been doing all along
- mingus88 9mo agoThis has been endemic for a long time. I’ve always known folk who game the system, regardless of politics or demographics The change I feel is that nobody even cares to be honorable any longer. There is no benefit, even culturally. As the article says, you’d have to be stupid not to do it. I’ve always tried to be honest idk But laws don’t matter anymore. There is no shaming bad actors. It’s all blatantly out there and no consequences have been doled out so here we are.
- FatherOfCurses 9mo agoThis article reads like Garry is pissed that someone invented a game whose main advantage doesn't depend on how much money you have.