NationStates Jolt Archive

As I sat through another monotone Biology lecture today, I pondered this:

Why, if I'm paying close to $10,000 a year to attend my University, why in God's name do I have to attend my classes?

I have several teachers who have lecture attendance policies... if I miss more than say, 5 classes, I fail for the semester.

Now, I don't expect a professor to let me make up a test or a lab or assignment if I'm not there, but, what gives them the right to determine when and if I spend my time in their class?

Over on this side on the pond it's a little different. I was told that technically I didn't have to attend any lectures (but since I'm studying Medicine it is not advised to miss them unless necessary) and I could still pass if I did enough book-learning. Of course, I'd still have to attend dissections and practicals. You can't just read that shit. And the government is paying most of my fees for me, since I'm poor. The irony is not on me.

Anyway, they demand an e-mail/face to face explanation if we miss lectures and a couple of modules require a 75% attendance. So it looks like we're in similar sea-vessels.

in my experience, any teacher that needs to impliment mandatory attendence is a crappy teacher. a good teacher makes every lesson so useful and interesting that kids don't WANT to miss them, or can't afford to miss them because the material is tough enough that they need to be in class. no half-way decent teacher would use an attendence policy, because such policies are just crutches for the idiots who are so bad at their job that nobody would show up if they were given the chance to skip class.

I've tried working that one out for years. Never have come up with an answer.

Part of it might be that you are taking some weed-out courses perhaps.

It's also dependent on the instructor, isn't it? I know I had some that had attendance policies others who did not care.

Hey, and 10K is cheap. You could be paying people much more of your money to have them fail you.

In some cases, it's a university wide policy, and it varies. When I taught, I had an attendance policy because the university required me to have one, but I never made it a policy that would have failed someone for non-attendance. My class was tough enough that you'd have failed if you didn't show up regularly anyway--lots of in-class writing assignments.

I suspect that attendance policies are caused by complaining parents--parents complain that they're footing this huge bill and their kids are still dumb, and so administrators want an out. They point to attendance records and tell the parents "your kid isn't showing up to class--not our fault. Now do you still want football tickets this year?"

I think attendance also has something to do with the reputation of the university. The more people graduate with good grades the better the uni's reputation gets. So if people don't regularly attend classes chances increase that they won't make it or drop out early. Which would hurt the uni's reputation. Which in turn could mean that they will get less new students who will spend near to 10k a year to study at that uni.
Just a thought.