Students with Intellectual Disability are Enrolling in College

While conversations, initiatives, and programming aimed at enhancing diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) of marginalized groups in higher education have come to the fore in the past decade, disability as a form of human diversity has been underrepresented in DEI strategic planning for colleges and universities.

Dr. Chelsea Stinnett, Technical Assistance Coordinator from the ICI’s Think College, and Dr. Rebecca Smith-Hill, Research Associate and Associate Director of the Center for Transition Research and Leadership at the University of South Carolina, recently co-authored the chapter “Disability as Diversity in Higher Education Spaces” in the Information Age Publishing book series, Current Perspectives on School/University/Community Research. Their chapter is featured in the book Justice, Equity, Diversity, and Inclusion in Education.

Smith-Hill and Stinnett provide an overview of disability history in higher education and detail the current landscape of higher education for people with disability, including the growing number of college students with intellectual disability. They also offer examples of how to include all students with disability in research aimed at improving their experiences in higher education. Overall, this chapter aims to examine disability not as a form of impairment, but as a category of identity worthy of “rightful presence” and recognition in postsecondary education spaces.

Read the book chapter in Justice, Equity, Diversity, and Inclusion in Education.