We think it’s the first of its kind in the Chicago area: a post-secondary program for students with learning and emotional disabilities. It’s called College Living Experience, and it has eleven students and a tuition that hovers around $33,000 annually. (With other expenses, that brings the tab to more than a year at Harvard.) Parents, faced with a bleak educational landscape for their students, view the cost as an investment in their students’ future.

Nationally, only about 13 percent of young people with these “invisible” disabilities attend college, according to the U.S. Department of Education. (In another era, they dropped out of high school and headed to factories, steel mills and other well-paying blue-collar jobs that have all but vanished from America’s landscape).

… In a way, they are pioneers because there is little data on outcomes. But as more researchers zero in on diagnosis and treatment of these impairments, there is growing awareness these young people desperately need post-secondary options that will lead to jobs and independence.

From the Chicago Tribune.

See earlier stories here and here.

Also, see www.thinkcollege.net for a full listing of post-secondary opportunities for students with intellectual disabilities.

This entry was posted on Saturday, August 25th, 2007 at 6:01 am and is filed under Asperger's, attention deficit disorder, college, learning disabilities, post-secondary education. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.