The Prevalence of Autistic College Students in the United States

How many autistic college students are in the United States? Research to date has not specifically addressed this seemingly straightforward question. Yet, an answer may be critical to the advancement of research, policy, and practice related to autistic students in higher education. This article addresses three related but distinct questions about autistic students’ college enrollment within the United States: (1) What percentage of autistic high school students go on to college? (2) What percentage of students registered with their postsecondary institutions’ Disability Services Offices are autistic? and (3) What percentage of enrolled undergraduates are autistic? To answer these questions, we examined 731 publications, reviewed 16 common survey instruments used at postsecondary institutions, and inspected codebooks from 6 federal datasets. Rather than employing traditional systematic review techniques, we used an iterative, consensus-driven assessment process to ultimately synthesize relevant data from 14 prior publications and 3 original author-generated statistical summaries drawn from a total of 13 distinct sources of underlying data. We conclude that the best available evidence suggests 42.9%–47.0% of autistic high school students continue on to college, 2.8%–4.0% of college students registered with their schools’ Disability Service Offices are autistic, and 0.3%–4.7% of all undergraduates are autistic. Ultimately, our calculations suggest that there are likely between 135,400 and 286,254 autistic undergraduates currently attending college in the United States. These estimates can be used by researchers, policymakers, and educators to highlight the importance of attending to the interests, needs, experiences, and outcomes for autistic students.