Demand Rises for College Executive Function Coaching
Demand for specialized executive function coaching is increasing among postsecondary students, with college disability offices reportedly beginning to recommend external coaches to supplement campus accessibility services. Current practice models emphasize collaboration between the student, coach, parents, and academic advisors to build a consistent support network.
- The shift from a highly structured high school schedule, with roughly 35 hours of weekly instruction, to a college environment with only 12-15 lecture hours creates a significant gap in structured time that many students struggle to manage independently. - The COVID-19 pandemic exacerbated this issue, as students in remote learning environments missed crucial opportunities to develop real-world time management, planning, and social-emotional regulation skills. - Students with diagnosed disabilities now constitute 19.4% of all undergraduates; this group has a degree completion rate of 34%, compared to 51% for students without disabilities, highlighting a need for targeted support. - A growing approach is neurodiversity-affirming coaching, which moves away from "fixing" a student and instead focuses on building strategies that work with their unique cognitive profile, validating their experiences and fostering a positive identity. - Research confirms the effectiveness of this type of intervention; one multi-year study of college students with ADHD found that coaching had an effect size on executive functioning that was quadruple that of typical educational interventions. - While some universities like Stanford and the University of Iowa offer academic coaching at no cost through their disability services offices, private coaching is a more common model. - The cost for private, external coaching can range from approximately $124 to $165 for a 45-minute session, with semester-long packages potentially costing several thousand dollars. - Coaching differs from traditional tutoring by focusing on the "how" of learning—building systems for organization, time management, and task initiation—rather than focusing on the "what" of specific academic subject matter.
