When does special needs become a catch-for-all?

This might be unpopular, but I've been thinking - particularly yesterday - about how in education we take care of learners who are less fortunate than we are/were and perhaps most of our other learners are. I ask myself about things that clearly make it harder for them to get a degree, and what we can do to help them to overcome these limitations.

I'm thinking particularly about disabilities and challenges that prohibit the normal access to teaching services. I know that the administration has policies about this sort of thing and in practice it raises all kinds of complications for the teacher who is trying to do a good job teaching in mass-production education for the vocations.

Mass-production being the point. Of course, when you are teaching popular degreecourses as I do (our growth is exponential, literally) then no matter what you do - judging that you don't want to hire just any idiot to teach on the faculty at your place because this leads to quality problems from the student's perspective and the unbearable desire to kick the living daylights out of them on yours as you run round the building sweeping their mess up after them -

[post written May 2010]