While transitioning from high school to postsecondary school is difficult for all students, neurodivergent students have additional barriers preventing them from adapting to this new environment. 

Neurodivergent students enter higher education with preexisting feelings of difference and low self-efficacy beliefs. Feeling different from peers and less capable, they struggle to adjust to an environment where they are faced with new situations and responsibilities daily. These challenges force students to create a new structure and change facets of their social identity when neurodivergence is often integral to personal identity. The anxiety these students feel often results in self-isolation.

The removal from routines and support systems can also contribute to feelings of depression, anxiety, and helplessness. Combined with difficulty managing change and independence, when these students lose their home life structure they often struggle more with executive functioning skills and are more prone to health-risk behaviors (Clouder et al., 2020).

To lessen the negative effects of college transition, support groups and mentorship have been shown to reduce loneliness and improve students' self-esteem (Clouder et al., 2020). Individual support and peer partnership are also helpful tools for helping students navigate the university environment (Farrant et al., 2022).

From the beginning, many neurodivergent students struggle with the fundamentals of education. Students may struggle with the technical aspects of writing and reading comprehension, maintaining focus during lectures, effectively prioritizing tasks, and other key skills.

The current state of higher education academics creates an environment where neurodivergent students are unfairly punished. Traditional academic methods unreasonably challenge those with reading & writing disabilities, difficulty concentrating, and a wide variety of other common neurodivergent struggles. 

The inflexible attitudes of many academic faculty and other students contribute to these oppressive conditions, as there are insufficient educational resources for campus community members resulting in the poor treatment of neurodivergent students when disclosing their struggles and needs. Many professors may not understand what reasonable accommodations may be and why these supports are needed, and peers may look down upon neurodivergent students for needing additional support. 

These negative experiences with postsecondary education further damage neurodivergent students' self-efficacy beliefs, and contribute to poor mental and emotional wellbeing. These students are limited by the mainstream expectations of academia and are prevented from achieving more challenging academic goals.

A more inclusive curriculum would minimize the barriers students face when pursuing further education. A Universal Design for Learning (UDL) model would benefit all students, creating engaging opportunities for diverse learners (Clouder et al., 2020). Attitudes and accessibility of material also significantly improve the wellbeing of students. Understanding the wide range of learning styles that come from neurodiversity and tailoring content to be mindful of neurodiverse needs would benefit university students regardless of disability (Farrant et al., 2022).

Neurodivergent students often struggle with socialization. Difficulties in reading social cues, recognizing others' expectations, and verbal & nonverbal communication make connecting with peers a challenge. In addition to this, bullying, stonewalling, and rejection are not uncommon from peers. These negative experiences and pervasive feelings of alienation deter students from attempting to interact with others and engaging in extracurricular activities. Despite a desire to make friends, neurodivergent students often find themselves self-isolating due to the intense anxiety that stems from socialization. As occupational potential is greatly influenced by social surroundings, these challenges also place neurodivergent students at a greater disadvantage.

The experience of living independently, while thrilling for some, can be severely detrimental to the health and wellbeing of neurodivergent students. Removed from structured home life, students living on campus often have difficulty taking care of their daily needs without the support of others. These students may struggle with everyday living skills such as cooking, cleaning, maintaining a healthy diet, dressing appropriately for the climate, and caring for their body. Lack of consistent structure also impacts students' organization and executive functioning. 

The adoption of tolerant and accepting social attitudes is a significant factor toward positive action. A welcoming campus climate would promote open communication of social and personal difficulties, and would allow for recognition of personal strengths. These attitudes can be developed through greater breadth of awareness established through accessible informational programming (Clouder et al., 2020).

Despite the implementation of academic supports in postsecondary institutions, students often struggle even when receiving some level of support. Support challenges typically stem from accessibility in obtaining reasonable accommodations, inconsistency and lack of communication between support sources, lack of funding and specialized professionals for programming, inadequate support for social needs, and poor faculty understanding of reasonable accommodations. 

Some accommodative struggles can be relieved by recognizing the importance of supporting students with additional support needs. Varied types and sources of support have been shown to improve academic performance and students' stress levels. To properly implement multiple sources of support, it is essential that the academic institution maintain effective communication between departments, direct adequate funding toward the development of neurodiversity accommodations and training, and provide a method of communication for neurodivergent students to voice their needs. 

Even when proper support is readily available, many students choose not to disclose their support needs or do not consider themselves disabled and are thus ineligible for additional support. Deliberate non-disclosure is often fueled by fears of stigmatization, alienation, and academic failure. When these students do disclose a disability, it is typically due to feeling safe to disclose, recognizing a specific need, or reaching a point of crisis where they can no longer cope without support. The discomfort these students feel accepting support or disclosing a disability limits the support they are able to receive and results in a poorer postsecondary education experience (Clouder et al., 2020).

An emphasis on an inclusive and welcoming environment is essential to creating a space in which students feel comfortable disclosing their needs. Implementation of training resources for faculty would guide them toward appropriate responses to the disclosure of a diagnosis and student requests for reasonable support and clarity (Farrant et al., 2022). Similar resources for peers can also be developed to create an inclusive environment in and out of the classroom.

To create a more fair learning environment, a Universal Design for Learning framework with systems to support all students would minimize both accommodative and disclosure-related struggles, reducing the reliance on supports and eliminating the need for students to disclose disabilities (Clouder et al., 2020).