Are college students too immature or irresponsible for professors to eliminate attendance policies in courses?
Are college courses fascinating enough and interesting enough for students to attend without each course having an attendance policy?
Yes is the most often given answer to the first question…by professors, of course. And, unfortunately, no is the most often given answer to the second question…by professors as well. But, I would argue that the answer should be no to the first question.
Attendance policies should be unnecessary in institutions of higher education. They should be eliminated school-wide.
And these policies should have been unnecessary throughout history. If higher education had never started attendance policies then a whole new and more responsible model of higher education would likely have developed.
Students have attendance policies in elementary school. There are attendance policies in high school. But higher education is a choice made by the student, a choice that assumes a level of responsibility and maturity beyond high school.
Yes, I can hear some of you profs chuckling. You say that without an attendance policy, many students just will not attend class. But, so what? Why should we as professors care about that? If a student wants to waste thousands and thousands of dollars, who are we to prevent that from happening by police-like tactics.
Why not treat attendance the way businesses treat attendance? If an employee has to miss, he/she has to inform the employer before the absence. And, even then, if too many absences occur, warnings or disciplinary actions are often taken.
Scores of professors and higher education administrators in this country decry the state of higher education. Students are said to be lazy, irresponsible, immature, and too often do not want to read, to write or to learn. So why not “cull the herd” by not requiring attendance but making it necessary through other means to attend the course to receive a passing grade? Then, eventually, only the responsible students who want to work hard will actually be in college.
Wait a minute. That model might please professors, but it certainly isn’t financially viable for universities. You can’t flunk out any significant portion of your paying audience simply because they aren’t responsible enough to attend class. Or can you?
Students miss class for a thousand reasons from illness to childcare to athletics. Eliminating attendance policies means that each professor does not have to deal with these things after the fact. If students let profs know beforehand that they will miss (like employees do) then the prof can discuss with those students whether the reason is a problem and can suggest ways to make up the missed material. If a student chooses not to attend and to inform no one, then it’s not a profs problem at all and the student is not likely to do well anyway.
Attendance policies do very little to encourage student responsibility. Teenagers and young adults tend to bristle and defy rules they do not agree with. Why not eliminate the requirement of attendance and allow a student to learn a hard and painful lesson if they do not attend classes. And why not make courses so good that students will not want to miss classes.
Doing these things will also force discussions in higher education to focus more on student responsibility and more on course excellence and less on punitive classroom policies.
Makes total sense to me.
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