DYSLEXIA

Published online 13 October 2015 in Wiley Online Library

(wileyonlinelibrary.com). DOI: 10.1002/dys.1517

■ Academic Achievement of University

Students with Dyslexia
Åke Olofsson1*, Karin Taube2 and Astrid Ahl3
1
Department of Psychology, Umeå University, Umeå, Sweden
2
Department of Language Studies, Umeå University, Umeå, Sweden
3
Department of Applied Educational Science, Umeå University, Umeå, Sweden

Broadened recruitment to higher education is on the agenda in many countries, and it is

also widely recognized that the number of dyslexic students entering higher education is
increasing. In Sweden, as in many other European countries, higher education institutions
are required to accommodate students with dyslexia. The present study focuses on the study
outcome for 50 students with diagnosed dyslexia, mainly in teacher education and nurses’
training, at three universities in Northern Sweden. The students trusted their own ability
to find information on the Internet but mistrusted their own abilities in reading course books
and articles in English and in taking notes. The mean rate of study was 23.5 European Credit
Transfer and Accumulation System credits per semester, which is slightly below the national
baseline of 26.7. The results show that more than half of the students are examined at a nor-
mal rate of study but that about one fifth have a very low rate of study. Copyright © 2015
John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.
Keywords: university studies; student achievements; functional disorders; dyslexia; teacher education;
nursing education

Key Messages
• Most students with dyslexia can compensate for their reading problems.
• Taking notes during lessons and reading in foreign language may be especially difficult for students
with dyslexia.
• Diagnoses should distinguish between reading comprehension and word decoding.
• More than half of the students with dyslexia can achieve at a normal rate of study.
• One-fifth of the students with dyslexia may need a longer period of study than other students.

Dyslexia implies a challenge to teaching in universities (Singleton, 1999). Students

with dyslexia are a group that has not been visible in the teaching, although they
also have existed before (Mortimore & Crozier, 2006; Parrila, Georgiou &
Crokett, 2007). A plausible conclusion is that the adaptation of the teaching to
these students has not been given priority. As a consequence of the widened
access to university studies, students with functional disorders, such as dyslexia,
have come to enjoy attention to an increasing extent (Ahl, Olofsson & Taube,
2010). In Sweden, there are now more students with dyslexia in university
courses, in both actual and proportional numbers, from 3634 (1.2%) in 2009 to
5457 (about 1.9%) in 2013 (Universitetskanslersämbetet, 2013a).

*Correspondence to: Åke Olofsson, Department of Psychology, Umeå University, Umeå SE-90187, Sweden.
E-mail: ake.olofsson@psy.umu.se

Copyright © 2015 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. DYSLEXIA 21: 338–349 (2015)
Achievement of Students with Dyslexia 339

Research on dyslexia in higher education has largely dealt with diagnosis of

students with dyslexia, their cognitive abilities, compensation strategies and study
techniques (e.g. Callens, Tops & Brysbaert, 2012; Deacon, Cook & Parrila, 2012;
Kirby, Silvestri, Allingham, Parrila & La Fave, 2008). Less research has been
directed towards students’ own experiences of inclusion in higher education
(Pino & Mortari, 2014). A small proportion of the research has studied how
students with dyslexia manage their studies. In a study by Richardson and Wydell
(2003), a database was used with all students in higher education in Great Britain
1995–1996. The researchers found that it was more common among students
with dyslexia than among other students to abandon their studies in the first year
of study and to not finish their study programmes.
In a study of 186 students with dyslexia at six institutions of higher education in
Sweden, Eriksson Gustavsson (2011) found that the rate of study of the great
majority was lower than expected. The study also showed that only a very small
number of the students had a very low rate of study and that the limited student
achievements had occurred early on in their studies.
One of the Swedish universities’ measures of throughput is a performance
indicator, which shows to what extent the students take the expected 30 European
Credit Transfer and Accumulation System (ECTS) credits they are registered for
per academic term. Another measure of throughput is degree frequency (the
proportion of students who take a degree within 3 years beyond regular study
time) (Universitetskanslersämbetet, 2014).
The present project focused primarily, but not exclusively, on two different
professional study programmes: teacher education and nursing education. Both
the teaching and nursing professions are verbal professions to a high degree. Both
professional roles require a good knowledge of the Swedish language and a good
reading and writing ability. Any problems in the area of reading and writing are
likely to cause difficulties in the everyday professional life. Teachers must be able
to see and understand the pupils’ difficulties and be able to explain and help their
pupils towards a good literacy development. Nurses must be able to read and note
medication and treatment prescriptions for the patients and keep written journals
effectively and correctly. In both these professional functions, reading and writing
problems have consequences for the third party.
The consequences also afflict a large number of persons, pupils and patients.
However, also students from other programmes were included because of strong
wishes from the students themselves and student counsellors. The aim was to find
out how well students with dyslexia estimate their own abilities to study and how
they manage their studies.

METHOD

The present study is a part of a research project (Olofsson, Ahl & Taube, 2012)
conducted at three institutions of higher education in Northern Sweden: Umeå
University (number of students in 2009, 20 953), the Mid Sweden University
(10 830) and Gävle University College (8 929) (The Swedish Council for Higher
Education, 2014). Students with dyslexia were interviewed, took reading and
writing tests and answered a self-report scale. Student achievements were
obtained from the universities’ study records.

Copyright © 2015 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. DYSLEXIA 21: 338–349 (2015)
340 Å. Olofsson et al.

Participants

Fifty students with dyslexia participated. Thirty-five (70%) were women and
15 (30%) men, which resemble data from the entire nation, where 64% of
the students who had access to the academic institutions’ support resources
for students with functional disorders were women and 36% were men
(Stockholms universitet, 2013). Our students were recruited from nursing
educations (13 students), teacher educations (22 students) and other study
programmes and courses (15 students: 8 studying social sciences, 2 health
professions and 5 natural sciences; Table 1). The participants were between
19 and 49 years old, and the average age was 27 years (Table 2). There were
no significant age differences between the groups. Seven of the students were
of foreign origin (non-native speakers of Swedish); these were included in the
study because they were judged to speak fluent Swedish. Five of the partici-
pants were in their first year of university study. Fifteen (30%) had proceeded
directly from upper secondary studies to university studies. Nine (18%) had
been unemployed, and 24 (48%) were employed before they started their
university studies. Twenty-eight (46%) of the participants had complemented
their upper secondary studies with municipal adult education and/or folk high
school studies. Students with dyslexia were recruited via student centres and
student counsellors and similar officials and advertisement sheets on the
student counsellors’ noticeboards. All but three of the participants already
had a dyslexia diagnosis from their previous schooling. Thirty-seven of the
50 participants (74%) were tested and diagnosed as having dyslexia by
researchers in the project. All of those 13 who chose not to participate in
the testing already had a dyslexia diagnosis.
The test session comprised word decoding, spelling, reading comprehension and
some language tests related to reading (Olofsson, Taube & Ahl, 2015). The test

Table 1. Number of interviewed female and male students with dyslexia distributed on educations
and institutions of higher education
Umeå Mid Sweden Gävle University
Education Gender University University College Total
The teacher education Women 8 6 1 15
programme Men 4 2 1 7
The nursing education Women 4 5 — 9
programme Men 4 — 4
Other educations Women 9 — 2 11
Men 1 — 3 4
Total 26 17 7 50

Table 2. The age distribution among the students in the different educations
Category Min.–max. age (years) Mean age
Student teachers 19–46 28.4
Nursing students 20–42 26.1
Other students 20–49 25.3
Total 19–49 27

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Achievement of Students with Dyslexia 341

results are summarized in Table 3. The participants’ word decoding ability was on
average considerably below expected values for adults without reading difficulties
and on the same level as that of several other groups with dyslexia. Clear difficulties
were noticed especially on tests with great demands for both speed and phonolog-
ical ability. The impression of the effect sizes (Table 3) confirms that the participants
show clear signs of dyslexia (cf. Callens et al., 2012; Olofsson, 2002).

Procedure

The participants were interviewed in accordance with a semi-structured

question guide and answered a self-report scale and were offered to go
through a dyslexia examination regardless of whether they had previously
been tested and diagnosed. The dyslexia test was implemented in private at
the university and took about 1.5 h. All data collection and student contact
were managed by the researchers, and every student met one and the same
researcher on a couple of occasions.

Measuring Instrument

We used a self-report scale with 26 questions dealing among other things with
demographic data on the students, the students’ attitude to remedial teaching
and various school subjects, and how the students estimate their own ability
Table 3. Results and norm values in diagnostic reading and writing tests and reading-related tests for
students with dyslexia
Ability Test Min. Max. Mean SD Cohen’s d
a
Word decoding Word chains 6 4526.7 11.1 1.47
Norm upper sec. educ., N = 401 41.8 9.4
Orthographic choicea 4 32 15.2 6.8 2.0
Norm, form 9 32 9.5
Phonological choicea 13 88 52.5 20.7 1.87
Norm, form 9 91 20.5
Reading words alouda 37 50 46.8 3.3
Norm upper sec. education 48
Reading words aloudb 37 313 99.2 60.2
Norm upper sec. education 57
Reading pseudo-words alouda 7 49 42.4 7.6
Norm upper sec. education 47
Reading pseudo-words aloudb 31 278 105.4 54.7
Norm upper sec. education 54
Spelling Spelling, 50 wordsa 3 48 29.8 9.9 0.40
Norm, form 9, N = 454 33.7 9.8
Reading comprehension 13 items from PISA 2000 11.6 2.7
Norm 15-year-olds 9.0
Vocabulary No. correct (max 19) 9 17 12.7 2.3 2.32
Controlc 17.4 1.7
RAN Digitsb 17.0 51.0 27.2 8.9 1.82
Controlc 17.4 1.7

N = 37 except for word chains and reading comprehension where N = 36. For further information about the tests, see Olofsson
et al. (2015).
SD, standard deviation; RAN, rapid automatized naming.
a
Number of correct answers.
b
Time in seconds.
c
From Olofsson (2002).

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342 Å. Olofsson et al.

regarding, for example, reading and understanding required reading and articles. In
the present study, only the answers to the questions on the students’ self-
estimated abilities are presented.

Record Extracts

Information on the students’ achievements in the education was obtained by

demand for extracts from the national student records database for the respective
student at the end of the project period in the spring of 2013. The individual
students’ average credits per semester were calculated in the ECTS. In further
contacts with the universities’ administrative staff, information was obtained about
which of the 50 participating students had taken a degree, dropped out without a
degree or alternatively were still studying.

Ethical Considerations

The participation was voluntary, and the students were informed that they could
finish their participation at any time without any special explanation. The partici-
pants were also told that the research results would not be accounted for in a
way that would make it possible to reveal the participating persons’ identity.

RESULTS

First, the results from the students’ self-reports and then their achievements are
presented. The most difficult parts of the studies were said to be the reading of
course books in English and managing to take notes during the lessons. Reading
course books in Swedish, spelling and written assignments were somewhat less
problematic (Table 4). Half of the students thought that they had a good ability,
and slightly more than 10% thought that they had a very good ability to read and

Table 4. The students’ self-estimated abilities, relative frequency, mean value and standard deviation

Distribution (%) of responses

1 2 3 4
Not good Less Good Very
at all good good M SD
Finding information on Google or other sites 0 8 46 44 3.4 (0.66)
on the Internet
Finding what one is looking for on the Internet 2 10 52 36 3.2 (0.71)
Reading and understanding course books and 0 34 50 12 2.8 (0.65)
articles in Swedish
Reading and understanding course books and 34 40 20 6 2.0 (0.93)
articles in English
Spelling ability 4 62 30 4 2.3 (0.66)
Managing to take notes during the lessons 34 38 22 6 2.0 (0.90)
Writing home assignments and similar tasks 4 42 46 8 2.6 (0.70)

SD, standard deviation.

Copyright © 2015 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. DYSLEXIA 21: 338–349 (2015)
Achievement of Students with Dyslexia 343

understand course books in Swedish. They also thought that their own ability to
write home assignments and similar tasks was good.
Slightly more than half of the students thought that their ability to manage
written assignments in the education was good (46%) or very good (8%). Their
confidence in their own spelling ability was less good, however. As many as 66%
judged their own spelling ability to be not good at all (4%) or not very good
(62%). It seemed to be most difficult to manage to take notes during the lessons
and to read and understand required reading and articles in English. More than 70%
judged themselves to be not good at all or less good in taking notes during lessons
and in reading foreign language (Table 4). On the other hand, 90% estimated their
ability to find information on Google or other sites on the Internet as good (46%) or
very good (44%). An almost equally high proportion, 88%, thought that their ability
to find what they look for on the Internet as good (52%) or very good (36%).
Second, the student achievement is reported by number of completed
credits per term, degree frequency and proportion of dropout. The number
of completed credits (ECTS) per semester was distributed in accordance with
Figure 1 for the 50 participating students. The number of ECTS credits per se-
mester varied between 1 and 35. The mean rate of study was 23.5 ECTS
credits per semester, thus 78% of the expected 30 credits per semester. Based
on the illustrated distribution, the material was divided into three categories:
normal (25–35), low (16–24) and very low rate of study (1–15). For the
students who had not taken a degree, the following applies: if a student had
been registered on a course at any time during the academic year 2012/2013,
the student was considered to be still attending the education, while students
who had not registered themselves during the same academic year were
considered to have left the education. Table 5 shows the rate of study of the
participating students and whether they had taken a degree, were still studying
or had dropped out. Fifteen female (43%) and five male students (33%) had
taken a degree, while 14 students were still studying. Eight women in our study
(23%) and eight men (53%) had dropped out without a degree. Of the students,
26 (52%) had a normal rate of study, 15 students (30%) had a low rate of study
and 9 students (18%) had a very low rate of study.

Figure 1. Frequency distribution of European Credit Transfer System (ECTS) credits per term.

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344 Å. Olofsson et al.

Table 5. Study success for students with dyslexia in the teacher education programme (teachers),
the nursing education programme (nurses) and in other educations (others)
Taken a degree Still studying Dropped out Total
Rate of study Women Men Women Men Women Men Women Men
Teachers
Normal 5 2 1 2 8 2
Low 3 2 1 2 5 3
Very low 1 1 2 2 2
Nurses
Normal 5 2 1 1 6 3
Low 1 1 1 1 3 1
Very low
Others
Normal 1 6 6 1
Low 1 1 1 3 3 3
Very low 2 2
Total 15 5 12 2 8 8 35 15

Of the students with a normal rate of study, 15 had taken a degree (58%), 8
(31%) were still studying and 3 (12%) had dropped out. Of the students with a
low rate of study, one-third had taken a degree, one-third were still studying
and one-third had dropped out. Of the students with a very low rate of study,
eight out of nine had dropped out. Only three students (23%) had dropped out
from the nursing education programme, while seven (32%) and six (40%) respec-
tively had dropped out from teacher education programme and other study
programmes without taking a degree.
The highest number of ECTS credits per semester was obtained by the nursing
education programme students, who on average achieved almost 5 ECTS credits
more than the students from the other programmes (Table 6). Notably, there
was no student in the nursing education programme that had a very low rate of
study. On average, the women attained about 6 ECTS credits more than the
men. The variation was greatest in the group of other educations and smallest in
the nursing education programme (Table 6). The ECTS scores were examined
with a 2 × 3 (gender [male, female] × programme [teacher, nurse, other]) ANOVA
with deviation contrasts. This ANOVA revealed a significant main effect of gender,

Table 6. Mean and standard deviation for ECTS scores by gender and programme

Study programme
Teachers Nurses Others
n M SD n M SD n M SD
Female 15 24.2 7.6 9 27.1 4.4 11 25.2 6.5
Male 7 18.9 10.0 4 26.7 3.3 4 12.6 12.1
Total 22 22.5 8.6 13 27.0 4.0 15 21.9 9.7

ECTS, European Credit Transfer and Accumulation System; SD, standard deviation.

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Achievement of Students with Dyslexia 345

F(1, 44) = 6.60, p = 0.014, ηp2 = 0.13, and a significant main effect of educational
programme, F(2, 44) = 3.39, p = 0.043, ηp2 = 0.13, with a significant difference
between the mean for the nurse programme and the average of the other
programmes (p = 0.015), but no significant interaction effect, F(2, 44) = 1.94,
p = 0.156.
Although the aim of the test session was to ensure the validity of the dyslexia
diagnoses, it might also be fruitful to compare the test results with the study
outcome. A comparison between the student achievements (ECTS credits per
semester) and the test results showed a positive correlation for the reading
comprehension test (r = 0.34, p = 0.046). No other correlations reached
significance; the largest of the non-significant coefficients was found for the word
decoding measure (r = 0.22, p = 0.19). The correlation between self-reported
spelling ability and the spelling test score was not significant (r = 0.17, p = 0.229,
n = 37). The overall low correlations found between study rate and the reading
test results cannot be analysed in any sensible way given our relatively small sample
size, but nevertheless, the results indicate that there is reason to separately report
(differentiate) results for reading comprehension and decoding as well as for test
and self-assessments.

DISCUSSION

The overall impression concerning our first aim is that the students’ estimation of
their ability to read and understand Swedish was not quite as low as might be
expected based on their poor results on the tests. In comparison with other
estimated abilities, it is obvious that the majority of the students have great
confidence in their own ability to find information on the Internet, despite that
information search on the Internet may involve the reading of large amounts of
text, which ought to be experienced as arduous for students with dyslexia. Their
lowest estimation concerns their ability to read course books and articles in
English and to manage to take notes during the lessons. Jacobson (2009) too found
that English is the school subject that nearly all pupils with dyslexia think they have
the greatest problem with. It is possible that the students’ low estimation of the
knowledge of English is aggravated in the context of Swedish pupils’ high level of
knowledge of English in an international perspective (Skolverket, 2012).
Difficulties in managing to take notes are also reported in other studies
(Mortimore & Crozier, 2006). The experience of not being able to manage
may be interpreted in relation to these students’ slow reading and writing
process that the test session revealed. These results are also in accord with
problems with pace in many different types of reading assignments (e.g. Beidas,
Khateb & Breznitz, 2013; Re, Tressoldi, Cornoldi & Lucangeli, 2014). The low
self-estimation of the ability to read is typical of students with dyslexia (Maughan
et al., 2009; Schulte-Körne, Deimel & Remschmidt, 1997). The results from the
students’ self-report are purely descriptive, and the focus here is on the
comparison between the estimates of the different abilities. It remains for future
research to make comparisons with other groups of students with and without
dyslexia.

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346 Å. Olofsson et al.

The results of our study outcome measures, our second aim, show almost
normal achievements. The average performance indicator for Swedish university
students was 26.7 ECTS credits (89%) in the vocational degree programmes and
82% in the general programmes (Universitetskanslersämbetet, 2014). An
explanation of the relative success of the present sample might be that they have
educational experience from upper secondary programmes preparing for
university studies and almost half of the participants have experience of post-
secondary educations. A reasonable conclusion is that their experiences from
successfully conducted educations preparing for university studies have
contributed to the development of sufficiently working compensation strategies.
The average study rate found in the present sample is in accord with results
from other Swedish universities of 23.9 ECTS credits for students with dyslexia
(weighted mean computed from Table 8 in Eriksson Gustavsson, 2011). In our
study, nine (18%) students with dyslexia achieved 1–15 ECTS credits per semes-
ter, which is in accord with the reported proportion (10% to 27%) in Eriksson
Gustavsson (2011). Only a very small proportion of the students in the present
sample had a very low rate of study, and none of these students attended the
nursing education programme. In summary, it may be stated that almost half of
the students with dyslexia need a longer period of study than other students
and that it may be expected that those with a very low rate of study will drop
out (cf. Richardson & Wydell, 2003).
The results that are presented in Table 6 show higher performance per
semester for women than for men. This is in accord with results for Swedish
students in general where the performance indicator was 24.6 ECTS credits for
women and 22.8 ECTS credits for men (Universitetskanslersämbetet, 2014).
The average number of ECTS credits per semester was higher in the nursing
education programme than in the teacher education programme and in other
programmes. These results are in line with the finding that degree frequency is
highest in vocational study programmes in nursing and medicine and it is higher
for women than for men in all large vocational degree programmes
(Universitetskanslersämbetet, 2014). A possible explanation of the better
throughput of the students in the nursing education programme might be a more
rigorous selection process in the admission of the students (The Swedish Council
for Higher Education, 2014).
Concerning degree frequency and dropout measure, the present results are
not directly comparable with Swedish national statistics. As already
mentioned, degree frequency is usually computed after the ordinary training
time plus 3 years. The present data were collected already during ordinary
student time. Hypothetically, at worst, none of the students still studying will
take their degree, resulting in a degree frequency of 40%. For Swedish
university students in general, the degree frequency for teacher programme
is 50–70%, 9 years after study start. For nurse programme, the degree
frequency is 81%, 6 years after study start (Universitetskanslersämbetet,
2013b). Our dropout measure reflects the number of students that leave
without a degree after several semesters of studies. In Swedish national
statistics, dropout is defined as the proportion of students leaving before
the second semester. Thus, the present results for students with dyslexia

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Achievement of Students with Dyslexia 347

are descriptive, and any comparison with other groups has to await further
research.
The present study concerns the theoretical part of the educations in
question. This might constitute a limitation, because the practical parts of
the educations may be disturbed by the functional disorder of dyslexia. In
both the professional educations, the nursing education programme and the
teacher education programme, research has shown difficulties for students
with dyslexia going into placement. Child and Langford (2011) found that
nursing students might benefit from receiving support from their placement
tutor and from somebody from their university who knows what dyslexia
implies. The students wanted the university to inform the staff at the
placement locality about their dyslexia before they arrived at the placement
locality. All students with dyslexia had experienced that their reading and
writing difficulties had affected their period at the placement locality. Their
problems with spelling, writing and reading had affected their confidence in
their own ability to learn. The analysis had shown, however, that the students
with dyslexia had developed personal strategies for managing their placement.
Anxiety and worry about the placement were frequent among the student
teachers as well (Griffiths, 2012). Reading aloud to the class and reading all
the literature that was required for the placement assignments were problems
mentioned by the student teachers as well as organizational difficulties in the
planning of lessons. Student teachers with dyslexia were worried that their
insufficient linguistic ability would have a negative effect on their future pupils’
learning. The difficulties were described as problems with finding words,
speaking fluently and using exact expressions (Griffiths, 2012).
Further, the present study does not deal with the effects that dyslexia
might have after a completed university degree. Experienced nurses with
dyslexia described problems with writing journals, calculating the amount of
medicine and fear of making mistakes (Morris & Turnbull, 2007). They often
had to check several times that they had made the right decision. They tried
to counteract such difficulties by means of a set of individual strategies. The
researchers drew the conclusion that dyslexia has a negative effect on
people’s working lives and careers and continues being a badly understood
and often hidden difficulty. Teachers are also faced with problematic situations
in their work, and this has also been a subject of research (Burns & Bell,
2010). They gave such examples as writing spontaneously on the blackboard,
keeping minutes in meetings, quickly writing down a conclusion after a group
discussion and commenting on the pupils’ documents in writing.
To summarize, the present results show that on the contrary to what is
commonly believed about, half of the students with dyslexia manage pretty
well despite their reading and writing problems. The mean rate of study for
the dyslexic students in the present study was just below the national
baseline. However, it should be noted that one-fifth of the dyslexic students
have a very low rate of study and will thus need special attention from their
teachers. The dyslexic students’ mistrust in their own abilities in reading
course books and articles in English and in taking notes should be taken into
consideration in the development of support systems for students with
dyslexia.

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348 Å. Olofsson et al.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

This research was supported by grant no. 721-2008-5344 from the Swedish Research
Council. We want to thank the students and the teachers who kindly volunteered to
participate in the study. The opinions expressed are those of the authors and do not
represent views of the institute or the Swedish Research Council.

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