Higher education is the main tool for people to acquire professional knowledge and skills, and the presence of higher education in Russia remains a factor that increases the success of a graduate’s employment. It is especially important to obtain higher education for people with disabilities. On the one hand, integration into the student environment contributes to the socialization and adaptation of the individual in society, which is of particular importance for students with disabilities. On the other hand, obtaining higher education by students with sensory impairments increases competitiveness in the labor market, and also increases the chances of professional and personal self-realization of a student with disabilities. Studying at a university places high demands on students, in particular those with sensory impairments. Students with disabilities are forced to cope not only with learning difficulties, but also with existing disease-specific adaptation difficulties. Currently, the state policy in the field of inclusive education is being implemented, conditions are being gradually introduced and extended to ensure access to full higher education for persons with disabilities. However, only 7% of school graduates with sensory impairments continue their education and enter universities. According to the Federal State Information System, the number of potential students with disabilities far exceeds the number of students: for example, in 2022, 31,996 people with disabilities studied at universities, while the total number of people with disabilities aged 18 to 30 years in the Russian Federation was 470,025. Thus, external resources are not the only measure of increasing the involvement of persons with disabilities in universities. In this regard, it is important to explore the internal resources of the individual, which in our study is hardiness. The relevance of hardiness, as a factor contributing to the successful adaptation of students, is determined primarily by the difficulties that arise in the process of studying at a university and can be aggravated if students have disabilities. The purpose of the research we conduct is to identify significant factors in the development of hardiness of students with sensory impairments. The hypothesis of the study was that the general level of hardiness of students with sensory impairments is lower than the general level of hardiness of “relatively” healthy students. The scientific novelty of the study lies in the fact that the research we propose can, to a certain extent, fill the niche that has not yet been sufficiently filled, of work aimed at studying the hardiness of adults with disabilities. Thus, at present, a certain body of work has been developed aimed at studying the methodological aspects of this topic (Leontyev, Aleksandrova), studying the hardiness of adolescents with disabilities (Gorkovaya, Miklyaeva, Tokarskaya), the hardiness of parents raising this category of children (Tokarskaya, Khorosheva E.V., etc.), however, there is extremely insufficient research on adults with health limitations and disabilities. The article presents the results of a comparative study of hardiness on a sample of two groups of students, including 85 people aged 19 to 23 years. The first group includes students with visual and hearing impairments, the second group includes students without disabilities. Methods: "Hardiness Test" by S. Maddy, Ways of Coping Questionnaire by R. Lazarus, Self-Compassion scale by K. Neff, Level of Subjective Control Questionnaire (E. F. Bazhin, E. A. Golynkina, A. M. Etkind). In the course of the study, no significant differences were found between the general indicator of hardiness in the two groups of students. Thus, based on the results of the comparative analysis, we can conclude that the main hypothesis of the study that students with sensory impairments have a lower level of hardiness compared to relatively healthy students was not confirmed. Such results may be due to the specifics of the existing samples: 1) the sample includes students with varying degrees of sensory impairments: both totally blind and deaf, and visually impaired and hearing impaired students; 2) probably, persons with sensory impairments who enter university, initially have a higher rate of general hardiness; making such a choice, a person is most likely aware of the possible difficulties that he may encounter at the university; 3) hardiness develops with age, and therefore we can assume that a level of hardiness among students with disabilities is, in general, higher than among schoolchildren; 4) the sample mainly consists of students from pedagogical universities in Russia, which could also affect the results of the study. However, the results of varimax normalized showed that students with sensory impairments are characterized by an internal locus of control, as well as high behavioral activity in difficult life situations, while students without disabilities, on the contrary, prefer such strategies of coping behavior as distancing and avoidance. The results obtained may indicate that persons with disabilities who enter a university initially have a higher level of subjective control, which affects their level of hardiness.