Originally published here.

The proportion of students with disabilities who graduate from high school,enroll in postsecondary education and obtain a postsecondary credential hasmarkedly increased in recent decades (Madaus, 2011; McCloy and DeClou, 2013;Newman et al ., 2010). While welcome, this increase in educational attainmentdoes not imply that all is smooth sailing for people with disabilities. They maystill face higher costs—in terms of time, effort and money—and, as a result, theymay drop out of postsecondary schools more frequently than people withoutdisabilities (Chambers, Bolton and Sukhai, 2013).

Perhaps more importantly, ifgreater educational attainment does not lead to greater labour market success,the underutilization of the talents of this group will persist.Using a unique, large, and nationally representative survey conducted onbehalf of the educational attainment and labour market experience of college and universitystudents who documented a permanent disability in order to be eligible for a grantfrom the CSLP. Those surveyed included students with and without documentedpermanent disabilities, all of whom had first enrolled in a postsecondaryinstitution between 2002 and 2004 and received a loan or grant from the CSLP.Because they were surveyed in 2009, five to seven years after first enrolling, wecan assess their educational attainment and their early post-schooling labourforce experience.We address two questions in this paper.

First, we ask whether students witha permanent disability are more likely to drop out of postsecondary education.Second, we ask how they fare in the labour market once out of postsecondaryeducation. We find that the dropout rates among respondents with and withoutpermanent disabilities are roughly the same. Using propensity score matching, weshow that matching on other observable variables does not change that result.The labour market outcomes for those with and without disabilities, however,are not the same. For this group of former students with disabilities, whoseeducational attainment is roughly equal to former students without disabilities,labour force participation is lower and unemployment higher.

In this paper, we analyze a unique survey conducted in 2009 by the Canada Student Loans Program (CSLP). The survey contains information on the com-pleted educational attainment and early labour market experience of a broadcross-section of students who used the Canada Student Loans Program while inschool. The sample includes a relatively large number of former students whohad also qualified for a CSLP grant because they had documented a permanentdisability. Our results are the first to be based on a large, nationally-representativesample.Overall, our story is one of an underpublicized success—the rising number ofstudents with disabilities in postsecondary institutions and their equal likelihoodof graduation—and a persistent problem—the continued disadvantage thatpeople with disabilities, even those with the same educational attainment aspeople without disabilities, face in the labour market.The development of policies to assist students with a permanent disabilitywould be aided by more research on this issue. For example, future researchcould look at the entire population of postsecondary students, not just thosewho received student financial aid. Research that generated results that vary bythe type of disability would help develop a targeted policy.The equality of educational attainment should not be seen as a rationale forcutting back support for students with disabilities. It is likely that the supportprovided by campus-based disability offices plus the financial support providedby government has allowed students with disabilities to feel more comfortableon campuses. Their success is probably due in part to those supports and in partto the far superior technological aids that are now available. The challengenow is how to achieve equivalent success in the labour market.

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