Part Time Accommodation in 4-Year College
So…you’re worried.
Your Autistic student is a senior in high school and has been accepted to a 4-year college – Yay! And they do well in their high school classes with their IEP services and accommodations, their 504 accommodations, or maybe they’re not in special education but you feel that the change between what they do have in their high school and the expectations in college may be more than they can transition successfully into as quickly as expected.
Your excitement for your student being accepted to college is now tinged with apprehension.
Will they be successful and can you do anything? You may not even know where to start. What are the options – just throw them into those 12 college units and hope for the best? You know they can get academic accommodations through their college’s Disability Student’s Program (DSP) office on their college campus (or whatever their college campus calls it). These academic accommodations may be similar to some of the accommodations they have received in high school, as provided for by their IEP or 504. Maybe some help with notetaking, a little longer for exams, priority registration. But how will this help if they are drowning in their academic courseload?
Did you know that your student may qualify for a part time or reduced courseload disability related accommodation. When a part time courseload is granted by the DSP it has the same academic result as a student attending part time but usually does not restrict the student from things that only full-time students get – like scholarships/grants, on campus housing, meal plans, and secure academic progress.
Part time status is an accommodation that's based on disability need, just like any other academic accommodation. It’s not granted “just because I want to take fewer units”. There needs to be medical based justification for it. Things like slow processing, executive functioning, social communication, sensory regulation, etc...that would make taking 12 units challenging based on their documented disability there is a case to be made to the DSP case manager. These things can often be justified for autistic students, and with many other disabilities.
Different colleges have their own process and so it’s impossible to tell you how to navigate this and what is needed to secure this accommodation, or if the accommodation is even available (although if not this could impact the student’s ADA rights, but that’s a whole other thing).
In general, there may be a form that the college DSP will want a medical professional to fill out for access to all academic accommodations. This would be something that a primary doctor, psychiatrist, therapist, or other such medical or mental health professional could fill out..
You can also have your student’s doctor write a separate accommodations recommendation letter. It would be best to have that conversation with them beforehand to discuss what academic accommodations would make sense for your student and to agree on what the doctor will recommend. The letter should have a description of the student’s diagnosis and general challenges. In the letter the doctor can list requested accommodation – this is where you would include the part time accommodation request, notation of supporting documentation, disability related challenge that requires the accommodation, and how the accommodation would help address the challenge.
With a part-time accommodation your student can ease into the increased academic expectations in college and still have time to build the other important skills they will need to be successful in college. Things like self-monitoring, problem solving, social and community integration, emotional regulation, self-care, basic independent living skills, getting sleep, eating, doing laundry, studying, getting help, managing sensory needs, and so much more. For our neurodiverse students all this is like having another class or two so, and it will all be a full-time effort to juggle it all.
And a part time accommodation will allow them to do that.