throwawayaccount

I will say, though, that there's an uncharitable assumption built into my original post: that admissions committees don't already take work experience into account when going over the applications of disabled people. Maybe they do; I don't really know. It may well be that disabled people are overrepresented in the social sciences precisely because dutiful committees account for these kinds of things. But there's certainly room to be skeptical, especially since there are programs out there that make such a big deal about experience. I think we ought to give credit to the more progressive programs, such as NYU, that offer the necessary experience within the program itself. That's an inclusive way to reconcile the fact that good MPA graduates need experience with the truth that not every good MPA applicant already has that experience.

Given your example, I think admissions committees who are doing their jobs would account for the fact that black applicants would tend to do a little worse on the GRE. If they didn't, that would definitely be discriminatory. And I'm sure there are programs who do that kind of thing. Now, in this case, I think programs ought to view disabled folks' work experience in a different light: namely that it's more difficult for a disabled person to have the same work history. If they do that, I suppose there's no problem. Do they do that? I'm not sure. Based on some of the programs that pretty much require experience, I kind of doubt it. And, to clarify, I wasn't arguing that it's necessarily discriminatory by that definition. What I meant to show is that discrimination is something that schools need to be wary of; it's not just a PR problem, it's a legal one. That said, I did look at the case law a little bit. It's all over the place, to be honest. But the disabled are a protected class, so any reasonably clear decision would probably follow along those lines. Many of the weird bits of admissions discrimination case law involve non-protected classes, or edge cases of protected classes (e.g. people claiming to be disabled on iffy grounds).

Do you have reasons why that you'd like to share?

And then there's the ADA: From the Americans with Disabilities Act:"Academic requirements must be modified on a case by case basis to afford qualified disabled students and applicants an equal educational opportunity. However, academic requirements that the institution can demonstrate are essential will not be regarded as discriminatory." It's tough to argue that it's essential when programs do admit non-disabled students with little to no experience.

TL;DR version: if disabled people have a harder time getting good jobs, it's discriminatory toward them to require good job experience for entrance to your graduate program. I think your immediate reaction is likely to be "no," but let's explore this a little. I think the logic behind most programs is something like this: we think professional experience helps to flesh out the content of our program, and so we generally require it. If you don't have the work experience, we recommend that you take some time, get that experience, and apply again some other time. Assuming programs don't mean to be discriminatory, there's an assumption at work here that getting professional experience is not unduly onerous for groups on race/class/gender/etc dividing lines. My point here is that disabled people have a tougher time getting jobs at every step of the way, which makes them less qualified for professional jobs, and this in turn makes them less qualified for programs that require professional experience. This should be pretty intuitive: if you're disabled, you generally have trouble with those first jobs you can get, which usually require some basic form of physical involvement (at least in my area). In my case, I have a mobility disability—walking, standing, and so on. So it's pretty easy to see how the wide range of jobs that involve standing behind a counter or doing physical work are off-limits to me. But for a college-age person, that's a large fraction of the available jobs. Furthermore, in my area, desk jobs are rarely entry-level jobs. (I should also point out that, in my area, internships are not much of a thing. I don't know anybody who had an internship in undergrad.) I'm saying that if you don't have those starter jobs, it's difficult to secure those second jobs, and it snowballs from there. In particular, it can be difficult for disabled people to land those kinds of early-career desk jobs. I don't want to speculate too much, but I think managers are more comfortable hiring early-career candidates with lots of work experience, and it's easier to get that experience if you meet certain physical standards. And so on: the people who get those early-career jobs get those professional jobs, and this would tend to exclude disabled people. This tendency toward exclusion would weaken disabled people's position with regard to admission to MPA programs. So, to look at some statistics, we would expect to find something like this: disabled people are employed at a low rate, disabled people are employed in non-professional jobs, and so on. Here's what I could find: In 2014, 17.1 percent of persons with a disability were employed, the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics reported today. In contrast, the employment-population ratio for those without a disability was 64.6 percent. http://www.bls.gov/news.release/disabl.nr0.htm In 2014, 33 percent of workers with a disability were employed part time, compared with 18 percent for those with no disability. (ibid) Persons with a disability are less likely to have completed a bachelor's degree or higher than those with no disability. Among both groups, those who have completed higher levels of education were more likely to be employed than those with less education. However, at all levels of education, persons with a disability were much less likely to be employed than were their counterparts with no disability. (ibid) Workers with a disability were more likely than those with no disability to work in production, transportation, and material moving occupations (15 percent compared with 12 percent). Workers with a disability were less likely to work in management, professional, and related occupations than those without a disability (31 percent compared with 39 percent). (ibid) In 2014, 15 percent of workers with a disability were employed in federal, state, and local government, about the same percentage as those with no disability (14 percent). (ibid) The unemployment rate for persons with a disability was 12.5 percent in 2014, about twice the figure of 5.9 percent for those with no disability. (ibid) Across all age groups, however, persons with a disability were more likely to be out of the labor force than those with no disability. (ibid) At the master’s level, 8% of all students with disabilities and 7% of all students without disabilities were enrolled in social and behavioral sciences.(From 2011) http://cgsnet.org/data-sources-graduate-students-disabilities So, given that stuff, we can probably conclude that disabled people do worse in the economy than non-disabled people. They're less likely to be found in professional environments than "normal" folks, but perhaps not by a huge amount. Still, there is no accounting for how those people got there. My claim to start was that disabled people would have a harder time finding a professional job for experience, and I think this data seems to hint at that. While the stat on master's programs would seem to have disabled people actually overrepresented in social science master's programs, it's important to keep in mind that very many of those programs do not require work experience of any kind. In fact, most fields do not require work experience at all, and so we can't draw much of a conclusion from that. Still, I think there's an amount of support to be drawn for my basic claim from what we've got here. Thoughts?