Accessibility Isn’t the Problem. Exam Design Is.

Harvard has improved at accommodating disability — and in the process, entangled itself into a harder question about what exams are for.

Harvard has seen an increase of more than 15% in the number of undergraduates receiving disability accommodation over the last decade. At roughly one-fifth of the student body, Harvard now sits near the national average. This comes in the wake of concerted efforts by Harvard's University Disability Resources to make its resources more accessible.

That is, first and foremost, progress. A more accessible Harvard is a better Harvard.

Accommodating disability is nonnegotiable, but assuring fairness requires Harvard to reconsider when its assessments measure genuine mastery and when it merely rewards speed.

The increased proportion of students with registered disabilities suggests that the College is matriculating students from a broadened pool of talent. But as accommodation rates have risen — particularly at elite institutions, and often in the form of additional time on exams — faculty and commentators have raised legitimate concerns about whether parts of the system could be vulnerable to misuse.

To the extent that misuse may be occuring, it is hardly surprising: it would be yet another instance of wealthy families attempting to game the system to get ahead. Families with greater financial resources may be better positioned to secure ostensible diagnoses.

But given the uncertainty over how many students actually require accommodations, it is unclear to what extent the rise is or is not merited. What is certain is that many students genuinely need accommodations, and they should receive them without stigma.

The practical question, then, is how courses can be designed so accommodations operate within assessments that are as fair, valid, and rigorous as possible. When it comes to considering how to approach testing accommodations, the College must thoughtfully consider pedagogy and the goal of assessments.

Tension over fairness arises primarily from the most visible and notorious of accommodations: extra time on tests. But as efforts to recenter academic rigor continue, a critical evaluation suggests a traditional timed test is not always needed.

In mitigating this tension, pedagogy must take the front seat.

When professors give timed written exams, they may be after a variety of learning goals: conceptual mastery, recall, organization, or perhaps speed. In some exams, additional time may not change outcomes much; if you know the material, you will succeed, and if you don’t, then no amount of time will improve your score.

In other exams, speed itself heavily determines performance. In this latter instance, extra time makes all the difference.

So the key question is straightforward: When should assessments depend on time?

Grades should reflect mastery of course material. As such, timed assessments are only one tool — sometimes a good one, sometimes a poor one — to measure that mastery. In some contexts, time pressure is meaningful. If it takes a student four hours to translate a sentence in French, their fluency is certainly in question. In other contexts, speed is incidental. In many advanced problem-solving settings, arriving at the correct method and justification matters more than racing against the clock.

In situations such as this, time pressure obscures — rather than reveals — understanding.

That is why the best response to a shifting accommodation landscape is not to restrict support for disabilities, but to rely less reflexively on high-stakes timed exams. Instead of disadvantaging students who need extra time but haven’t proven it, Harvard could reduce the problem as a whole by making the use of time constraints deliberate, rather than default.

The central fairness question is not how tightly Harvard should police accommodations, but how intentionally it should design its coursework.

This staff editorial solely represents the majority view of The Crimson Editorial Board. It is the product of discussions at regular Editorial Board meetings. In order to ensure the impartiality of our journalism, Crimson editors who choose to opine and vote at these meetings are not involved in the reporting of articles on similar topics.

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