Mandatory attendance is a cop-out. Either you can pass the exam or not, surely? I never insisted on it when I was teaching. I figureed, either they come or they don’t. Come exam day, there’ll be a wailing and gnashing of teeth, but that’s neither my fault nor my problem. University is NOT high school.
It depends on what subject you are talking about.
Courses that are fact or skill driven do not really need attendence policies–by that I mean that for some courses what that credit means on your transcript is that you either know a certain set of facts or have a certain set of skills. OFr such a course, being able to pass the exam shows you have the knowledge and/or skills and so you should have the credit.
For other types of courses, what that credit means on your transcript is that you have had a certain amount of experience doiung something. This is certainly true of English courses: you may read 7-9 novels in the semester. There likely is no mid term or final–instead you have 2 or 3 papers, which may be each about one or two of the novels you read in class or may be about other novels entirely. You may never be formally evaluated on those 7-9 novels, because for a class like that., the credit doesn’t mean you’ve read some argreed upon set of novels–it means that you have read great literature and spent time analying it in a group–if you don’t participate in that group analysis, you haven’t completed what the credit signifies, and you shouldn’t get it–no matter how brilliant your paper may be.
I wish that went for all lib arts schools. A girl from my high school class went to a small college where she would have her father call up to a) throw tantrums to raise her grades (it worked), b) have her made an RA (her students hated her), and c) get her out of writing a senior thesis.
I don’t understand these students or their parents.
Nicely said!
Palewriter, I don’t give finals. Much of what happens in my classes is integration of the readings/assignments and practice, in class. Thus I take roll. If I were on semesters I might organize some classes differntly, but on a quarter system, missing one once-a-week class means missing 10% of the discussion.
I’d say this is a myth. I heard it all my life, ignored it because I was lazy, applied to 12 schools (all of the UCs except UCLA and UCSD and a few private schools) and got accepted into all of them based on grades. I was not an extra-curricular kind of girl.
I remember last semester, my American Lit 3 prof said to me “Thank you for coming to class every week.” I was blown away. A professor was actually thanking me for coming to class?! Then I realized I was one of the few students who attended very single class, though there is a school wide mandatory attendence policy. You are allowed 4 absences in each class before your grade is affected. I like to “save” my 4, so as a result, I’m never absent.
Though Ican definitely see the appeal. I have one class that meets twice a week, though now I’ve gotten to the point I’ll blow it off once a week. The students make it pretty much unbearable (ftr, it’s Sex and Gender Issues) and the profs never lecture. And when they do I can’t stand it because one stutters and the other has a thick Turkish accent. We’ve had two tests now, and nothing on the test has come from any lecture. I just don’t feel too guilty about missing that class…and as mentioned before, I’m super anal about attendence.
As long as we’re flamin’ students here…
FUCKIN’ GRADES ARE NOT FUCKIN’ NEGOTIABLE, YOU FUCKIN’ FUCKHEADS! WHAT THE FUCK IS WRONG WITH YOU FUCKIN’ FUCKERS! FUCK!
“Just because I didn’t answer your question completely, that doesn’t mean that I deserve a C.”
NO IT DOESN’T; IT SHOULD MEAN THAT YOU DESERVE A FUCKIN’ F. BUT I WAS FEELIN’ FUCKIN’ GENEROUS AND GAVE YOU MORE FUCKIN’ CREDIT THAN YOU FUCKIN’ DESERVED FOR THAT FUCKIN’ FUCKED UP ANSWER!
PANT PANT PANT
Well, better here than during office hours…
Sorry Manatee, us students do suck at times.
I asked for help one time because I fucked it all up, he said no, I said thanks for your time.
I found one good thing for classes with attendance policies that are completely a waste of time to go to anyway. I usually do papers, catch up on my reading, make my to-do list, shopping lists, figure out by budget, etc… It’s a great time saver.
All the childrens I work with that are going to college, we get about 3 HS seniors a year, I always harp on them, “Go to class, even if it is stupid to go, go anyway. Study. Study some more. Do your stuff early. Then do it earlier next time. Get motivated because they don’t care.” Who knows if they listen.
I don’t mind a student asking for help (or even clarification). If a student comes into my office with their test or paper and says “I thought this was pretty good; you obviously didn’t. Could you explain more thoroughly what I did wrong?” then I’ll happily sit down and go through their work with them. If a student comes in and says “Man, I really screwed this test/paper up. How can I do better next time?” that’s fine with me.
Instead, though, I’ve been geting a wave of “Can I have a B on this instead?” I’m sure that you’d like a higher grade on it; why don’t I just give you an A? After all, you turned in your work, didn’t you? Or students who tell me that that they know that their work was shoddy (no support; an implied thesis at best) but that they’d like a higher grade anyway. Oh, OK; should I clip a $100 bill to your paper, too?
It’s these dipshits who prompted my rant above. Students who ask for help are just doing what by definition they should be doing: learning.
That is a sign that the Prof. knows what they are doing. My 300 and 400 level classes are designed like this. Most of the students know me, and those who are transferring in as juniors find this out very quickly. I assign ‘bulk reading’ as I call it early on in the semester this is on purpose, to let the students know that I expect they know the material when they come to class. This way I do not need to talk about the reading, instead we can have a discussion on what the impact of said reading has on certain topics. Case in Point: I ask students to have read Euripides: The Bacchae by class three of my Sex and Sexuality class. I reference the Bacchant’s behavior quite often when talking about satyriasis and nymphomania.
Whether or not attendence is mandatory or not, it is the students responsibility to let me know via email that they will not be coming. I mention this the first day, and it is bolded in the syllabus. I have a student in my 104 class who is routinely not there, he is a commuter and has a family. He emails me everytime he is not in class. This is a good practice.
First of all, do you teach your Sex and Sexuality course by e-mail? 
Second, I agree with the practice of notifying your professors if you’re going to be absent. l, too, am a commuter student with a family, and most of the classes I’ve missed have had something to do with that fact. If I notify my instructors, a) I don’t have the issue of unexcused absences (usually), and b) I can get an idea of what I missed so I can be prepared for the next class and not have to play “catch up”, at least not so much.
Robin
Christ, Monty, stop being such a little pissweasel. I was pointing out why I was confused, and saying that I realize now what you were objecting to.
That whole series of thoughts is very short-sighted. To begin with every college I can think of looks at out of class activities. Some give scholarships for “play[ing] the triangle” or twirling (which is usually a part of the band program, not cheerleading, but whatever), not to mention athletics. Some students won’t go anywhere without the scholarships. Reading, writing, etc. is all important, but, for most college-bound students, high school must be something more.
You also conviently left out the part about the “three or four or five AP and pre-AP classes.” I would hope they had the basics well in hand at that level. If not that’s a problem of elementary education.
Well most colleges look at extracurricular activities. I am currently on the admissions guidelines committee at the college I work on, we have the latitude to be able to be highly selective. The student who is valedictorian of her highschool, but did absolutely no extracurricular activities is less attractive to us than the valedictorian of another school, who volunteered for the Make-A-Wish Foundation in her spare time, and was a girlscout until age 17.
We look at the merits of students with different values for each merit…
Interestingly, one of my professors this semester gets very irked if you call or email her to let her know that you will be absent. Her reasoning is that it will be plainly obvious that you are not in class, and therefore she doesn’t need to be notified of that fact.
Dream Killer
Some books are for learnin’. Some books are for life.
Hey, um, Phlosphr? This small, private liberal arts school with an honor code that’s at 41 degrees north…does it happen to have a Lutheran affiliation? Cause, if it does, it’s my school.
See, I kinda skipped half the classes taught by an environmental psychologist my freshman year (it was a psych stats class), and now I’m wondering if you were my professor. If you were, I’m really, really sorry…
Dum-da-dum-dum! Busted?
I think Phlosphr is at Yale, yes? That’s not Lutheran, right?
Oh! I didn’t know that, Melandry; I go to Valparaiso University, which also fits those criteria. Though I’m sure I could’ve gone to Yale if I wanted to ;). ::insert college envy here::