BOWLING GREEN, Ky. -- The first generation of college students with an autism diagnosis is fanning out to campuses across the country. These growing numbers reflect the sharp rise in diagnosis rates since the 1990s, as well as the success of early-learning interventions and efforts to include these students in mainstream activities.
Increasingly, schools are offering comprehensive support like the Kelly Autism Program at Western Kentucky University. Similar programs have been taking root at nearly 40 colleges around the country, including large public institutions like Eastern Michigan University; California State University, Long Beach; the University of Connecticut; and Rutgers University in New Jersey.
The University of Arkansas at Fayetteville started its Autism Support Program four years ago, and the first two students to complete the program graduated in the spring.
For decades, universities have provided academic safety nets to students with physical disabilities and learning challenges like dyslexia. But students on the autism spectrum need a web of support that is far more nuanced and complex.
Autism affects the brain's early development of social and communication skills. A diagnosis of autism spectrum disorder can encompass an array of people, from the moderately impaired and intellectually nimble, to adults with the cognitive ability of children.
Counselors in programs like Western Kentucky's not only coach students who struggle to read social cues, but also serve as advocates when misreadings go terribly awry, such as not recognizing the rebuff of a sexual advance.
The 45 undergraduates in the Western Kentucky autism program spend three hours a day, four days a week, at the program's home at the edge of campus.
They study, meet with tutors, and confer with counselors and a psychologist to review myriad daily encounters. The counselors maintain ties with dorm supervisors, professors and the career center, mediating misunderstandings.
The program, which started with three students a little more than a decade ago, anticipates being able to admit 77 students by 2019. Like most such programs on other campuses, it charges a fee; Western Kentucky's is $5,000 a semester, much of which may be covered by federal vocational rehabilitation funds.
With the program's help, some of the students can enter the four-year university directly from high school. Others first try community college. After Kaley Miller graduated from high school, relatives put her in a group home and then a residential home with elderly adults, where she spent her days doing factory piecework. Finally, at a psychiatrist's suggestion, Miller's parents decided to let her try a college that provided support for students on the spectrum.
When she moved into a Western Kentucky dorm, Miller, 24, a junior art student, reacted in wonderment.
"There were so many people my age and everyone was so normal," she said.
Some of these students have felt the excruciating loneliness of exclusion. "One student told me, 'I was so excited about college because I hear you don't get bullied there, and I don't know what that's like,'" said Sarah McMaine-Render, the program's manager.
It is hard to know how many students with autism attend four-year schools. A 2012 study in the journal Pediatrics found that about 50,000 teenagers with the diagnosis turn 18 each year and 34.7 percent attend college. Without support, though, few graduate.
That is in part because many students with an autism diagnosis do not step forward, fearing stigma. Some experts speculate that for every college student on the spectrum who identifies himself with a diagnosis, there may be two more who are undisclosed.
But as the growth of the so-called neurodiversity movement prompts people on the spectrum to define themselves as different but not deficient, more students are emerging from the shadows. The Bridges to Adelphi program at Adelphi University in Garden City, N.Y., serves about 100 students with autism. At the University of Texas at Dallas, 450 students with the diagnosis have registered for services with the Student AccessAbility office.
Their presence on campuses is also a testament to the tenacity of families and disability advocates who, since the 1990s, when awareness of autism began to mushroom, have pressed for earlier diagnoses and interventions. Much of that battle unfolded in public secondary schools, leading to more services.
In 2012, Andy Arnold, who was given an autism spectrum diagnosis as a child, enrolled as a freshman at Western Kentucky.
"It was terrifying," he recalled. "I was anxious and went off my meds. I'd forget to shower and brush my teeth. I would do rituals, like walking around outside the dorm. I kept grabbing at the back of my neck.
"I started skipping classes. I didn't really know how to study, so I fell behind quickly. I ate too much. I behaved irrationally to people."
He dropped out.
He lived at home, taking online courses for a few years, then reapplied to Western Kentucky. Now 23, he is back at school -- and this time, he is in the autism support program.
"I feel less panicky," Arnold said. "I like getting to know people here at the center. We have something in common."
A Section on 11/20/2016