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Study looks at employment rates of U. of I. graduates with severe disabilities
Melissa Mitchell, News Editor
217-333-5491; melissa@illinois.edu
3/15/04
CHAMPAIGN, Ill. —
The University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign has long been known for
its pioneering programs and services for students with disabilities.
And judging by results of recent studies of employment outcomes for
university graduates with severe disabilities, those programs are continuing
to make their mark.
Recent survey responses from 94 Illinois alumni with spinal cord injuries
or disease (SCID) who graduated between 1978 and 2002 indicate that
79 percent of graduates with paraplegia and 70 percent of those with
quadriplegia were employed. In addition:
• 92 percent had worked for pay in the past five years;
• 90 percent had graduate degrees;
• 73 percent had annual personal incomes greater than $35,000;
• 42.8 percent had annual personal incomes in excess of $50,000.
Brad Hedrick, the director of the university’s Division
of Rehabilitation-Education Services and principal investigator
for the study, said those figures contrast with a 2000 National Organization
on Disability/Harris poll that indicated only 33 percent of working-age
persons with disabilities with college degrees were working full time
for pay, and 12 percent were working part time.
These data and others were presented by Hedrick and Tanya Gallagher,
the dean of the College of Applied
Life Studies and the director of the Disability
Research Institute, at the Emerging Workforce Conference last month
in Weston, Fla.
The conference included representatives from the National Council on
Disability, the Social Security Administration, the Ticket to Work and
Work Incentives Advisory Panel, the President’s Committee for
People With Intellectual Disabilities, the Access Board, and the President’s
Committee for Purchase From People Who Are Blind or Severely Disabled,
and representatives from other federal, state and international entities.
The presentation by Gallagher and Hedrick focused on the strengths of
the “Illinois Model” for educating students with disabilities.
The model, Hedrick said, “is born of a holistic philosophy that
includes academic, physical, social and psychological supports.”
Among its many components, the Illinois Model includes intensive transitional
orientation for students on both ends of the collegiate experience –
as they move from high school to the university, and later, from the
university into the job market. Illinois is one of only three institutions
to offer personal-assistant services, which Hedrick said, serve as a
bridge – “between the mom-and-dad service” students
with disabilities have typically relied upon and “the self-sufficient
approach to the management of personal assistants that they will need
to be successful following graduation.” The program prepares students
for self-sufficiency by engaging them as full partners in the recruitment,
screening, interviewing, hiring, training, scheduling, payment and evaluation
of their personal-assistant staff.
Students also receive training in self-advocacy, and are encouraged
to participate in seminars and/or to enroll in courses on the history
and evolution of disability rights and nondiscrimination laws. They
learn strategies for improving their study and notetaking skills as
well as time-management and organizational skills. Students also are
afforded opportunities to take courses for academic credit to improve
their information-technology literacy and proficiency in the use of
state-of-the-art assistive information technologies, and to learn how
to most effectively maximize their physical and mental health through
the pursuit of proper nutrition and exercise.
In addition to the survey results of alumni with SCID, Hedrick said
another measure of the success of the Illinois Model is the fact that
only one percentage point separates the graduation rate of Illinois
students with disabilities from that of the campus at large.
“But nationally, according to a 1999 study by the National Center
on Education Statistics, students with disabilities are 15 percent less
likely to graduate than their peers without disabilities,” he
said.
Among the campus’s alumni who lived at Beckwith
Hall – where they received personal-assistant support services
to perform daily-living activities, such as dressing, eating and grooming
– 60 percent who graduated since 1995 obtained professional employment
following graduation, while 32 percent entered graduate school. Only
8 percent did not enter the work force after graduation.
Hedrick said those outcomes were corroborated by a recent study by the
university’s Office of Planning and Budgeting. That study found
that 58.3 percent of former Beckwith Hall residents who graduated between
1986 and 2000 were employed one year following graduation.
