# Why are colleges slow to accommodate working students? **URL:** \ **Category:** In My Humble Opinion\ **Created:** [January 18, 2012, 9:53pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-are-colleges-slow-to-accommodate-working-students/609945 "2012-01-18T21:53:25Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 8\ **Page:** 2
**Author:** ![Dangerosa](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/22d042/32.png) [@Dangerosa](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Dangerosa)\ **Post date:** [January 19, 2012, 5:36pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-are-colleges-slow-to-accommodate-working-students/609945/21 "2012-01-19T17:36:03Z")
> [@Dr.Drake](#): > > Most of the complaints I hear from working students are that the university doesn’t prioritize the student’s job over the university courses, like the example above of having points docked for missing class. What? The class is just as important as your work travel. You are forced to choose. Yes, it sucks, but why should class be considered optional? Frankly, I think this question should be considered in both directions: why won’t your job allow you to miss work if something important comes up for school? > > The answer seems to come down to money. Work pays you, while you pay the university, and so implicitly you (generic you, no one specific) buy into this hierarchy and assume that work is more important. After all, you’re only going to school for a better job, right? > > NO. Your education is a goal in and of itself, or should be, one that incidentally leads to more opportunities because you come out a better person (more knowledge, more skills). I’m all for flexibility in the university system, but every demand I’ve ever seen seems to be that the university bend for the needs of work. Students are not customers and they are not clients. Have a little respect for what you are paying all those thousands for. > > Part-time university education is great, but you still have to be able to commit the time. There’s simply no way around that. Many universities offer night, weekend, and online courses, but for those 6 / 10 / 15 weeks, you still have to fully commit to at least one course. That means taking several hours a week away from your job, family, chores, leisure time, and / or sleep. It’s hard, and frankly your grades are going to suffer if you can’t commit that time. But you know what? Grades aren’t nearly as important as you think they are. Most returning students know they could get As (quite correctly), and freak out if they are handed a C. > > My advice to the working people of the world: chill. Do the best you can knowing you’ve taken on more than a full-time undergrad could manage, and don’t worry about squeezing every last drop of knowledge from the experience. Because they are billing their environment for working adults. At the end of a course, the measure should be “do you have competency in the material”. There are ways to demonstrate that with a lot more confidence than “was your butt in class while you surfed the Internet on your laptop.” ---
**Author:** ![Dr.Drake](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/ad7895/32.png) [@Dr.Drake](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Dr.Drake)\ **Post date:** [January 19, 2012, 5:45pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-are-colleges-slow-to-accommodate-working-students/609945/22 "2012-01-19T17:45:33Z")
> [@Dangerosa](#): > > Because they are billing their environment for working adults. At the end of a course, the measure should be “do you have competency in the material”. There are ways to demonstrate that with a lot more confidence than “was your butt in class while you surfed the Internet on your laptop.” If the grade was 100% on attendance, you have a point. Personally, I never grade on attendance for just that reason. I still disagree, though. Being in class isn’t neutral. Otherwise, why would you ever go? ---
**Author:** ![Omar\_Little](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/omar_little/32/269_2.png) [@Omar\_Little](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Omar_Little)\ **Post date:** [January 19, 2012, 5:59pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-are-colleges-slow-to-accommodate-working-students/609945/23 "2012-01-19T17:59:39Z")
> [@Agent\_Foxtrot](#): > > think school would jump at the chance to help working students, as we generally work harder, are more committed to graduating, and have more income to spend on the school. And our numbers are growing fast. Those maybe the facts for you individually, but they are a lot of assumptions made with regard to customer base that I’m not sure are truly proven. Have you inquired of the office of admissions if their experience with that particular segment of students is accurate or not? ---
**Author:** ![Kolga](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/k/e56c9b/32.png) [@Kolga](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Kolga)\ **Post date:** [January 19, 2012, 7:30pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-are-colleges-slow-to-accommodate-working-students/609945/24 "2012-01-19T19:30:46Z")
> [@Dangerosa](#): > > Because they are billing their environment for working adults. At the end of a course, the measure should be “do you have competency in the material”. There are ways to demonstrate that with a lot more confidence than “was your butt in class while you surfed the Internet on your laptop.” I never require attendance for either my non-traditional or my traditional students. My attitude is that if they can pass without attending, more power to 'em. Most of them can’t, but don’t know that. I tell them they are welcome to roll those dice, though. However, they are still expected to get the work in on time, and to take the exams when scheduled. I give them a schedule for the semester on the first day of class and stick to it whenever possible. It’s their responsibility to make the right choice for them. If that involves not coming, fine - as long as they understand that there may be consequences for that decision, such as missing material or not understanding concepts as well as they could. > [@Thudlow\_Boink](#): > > This isn’t directed at the OP, but I think **Dr. Drake** has a point. Some adult, full-time-working college students are excellent, exemplary students. But I’ve heard of some who have the attitude that, because they’re busy people who have so much else going on in their life, they shouldn’t be required to do as much academic work. “I work two jobs! I don’t have time to do all that reading / homework / research / class attendance / whatever!” That, and/or “I’m paying good money for this, so lay off all these requirements and just give me the degree already!” I don’t encounter this much, but when I do, hoo boy. The student who says “I’m raising a family and working full-time and caring for an ill parents - I don’t have time to do all this work for your class!” Listen, my school is not one of those that you just pay your money and get a piece of paper. I have academic standards to meet, both as a professional and for the institution and state. I can’t give you a grade just because you enrolled - you actually have to demonstrate competence on the assignments and exams. If your schedule doesn’t allow you sufficient time to learn the material, that’s not my fault. And the “my tuition pays your salary” argument makes me LOL. My base salary is close to 45K, so let’s use that figure for the purposes of this little example. I teach six classes a semester, but I’m required to teach five, but always teach one more for a little extra. My average enrollment in my classes is 30 students. I teach 15-week semesters. Salary = $45K with all of it being paid from collected tuition. This isn’t true in any institution, but let’s use it for the example. Weeks per year = 30 Students per class = 30. Teaching load = 5/5.(This translates to fifteen hours in the classroom per week, which is how much students AND the public think we actually work, ignoring grading, advising, office hours, lesson plan development, committee work, meetings, writing, etc.) The math: (30 wk/yr) x (15 hr/wk) x (30 students/hr) = 13500 student-sessions per year. ($45,000/yr) / (13500 student-sessions/yr) = $3.33 per student-session. So, even IF my ENTIRE salary was paid by tuition, students would only be paying me a little over $3 per class. ---
**Author:** ![Dangerosa](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/22d042/32.png) [@Dangerosa](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Dangerosa)\ **Post date:** [January 19, 2012, 8:18pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-are-colleges-slow-to-accommodate-working-students/609945/25 "2012-01-19T20:18:36Z")
> [@Dr.Drake](#): > > If the grade was 100% on attendance, you have a point. Personally, I never grade on attendance for just that reason. I still disagree, though. Being in class isn’t neutral. Otherwise, why would you ever go? No it isn’t necessiarily neutral. But people who have to be rewarded in order to attend aren’t the folks you want to reward. ---
**Author:** ![aceplace57](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/aceplace57/32/3500_2.png) [@aceplace57](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/aceplace57)\ **Post date:** [January 19, 2012, 8:35pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-are-colleges-slow-to-accommodate-working-students/609945/26 "2012-01-19T20:35:02Z")
The school I work at has been traditionally considered a commuter collage. Our average student age is around 26. We offer a lot of class sections at night. Especially the basic academic courses like English, history, Literature and Spanish. Working students usually can take most of their first two years of undergrad requirements at night if they want. When you take classes for your major it gets harder to find night sections. Especially in the smaller academic departments. There’s not that many professors and they prefer working in the day. The senior level classes are rarely offered at night. There may only be couple sections of each class and they’ll be in the daytime. Our school is changing. They built the first dorms about ten years ago. We are starting to attract more kids right out of high school. As more dorms get built we may not be a commuter school twenty years from now. ---
**Author:** ![Voyager](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/voyager/32/133_2.png) [@Voyager](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Voyager)\ **Post date:** [January 19, 2012, 9:17pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-are-colleges-slow-to-accommodate-working-students/609945/27 "2012-01-19T21:17:16Z")
> [@Thudlow\_Boink](#): > > My reaction to reading the bit that the OP quotedwas “Well, duh!” > > People who spend a lot of time working and don’t have as much time to spend on their studies, may not do as well in school. People who have commitments that make them only able to take classes at certain times, may find that there are limitations on what classes they can take. No shit, Sherlock! Not to mention that most human beings start getting tired at night. I taught a night class, due to a schedule conflict not for working people, and despite the fact that everyone who took it was young (me too) I could feel the attention flagging as time went on. I can just imagine what it would have been like if the students had been working all day. Two people working for me got degrees while working, one a PhD, and I respect them for it, but it is pretty hard. There is nothing a college can do to create time for school. ---
**Author:** ![Fair\_Rarity](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/fair_rarity/32/153_2.png) [@Fair\_Rarity](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Fair_Rarity)\ **Post date:** [January 20, 2012, 2:49am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-are-colleges-slow-to-accommodate-working-students/609945/28 "2012-01-20T02:49:24Z")
As a student, listening to my fellow students complain how they’re too busy doing other things to actually do schoolwork annoys the hell out of me. So night/commuter/non-traditional students should not get a pass “just because,” but if I’m taking a non-traditional course, I do expect it to be structured in a way that reflects the nature of the course. The example given earlier about an assignment being given in the morning, due at the end of that same day? That’s ridiculous. It doesn’t matter how easy the assignment is: sometimes we don’t have time. Same-day-due assignments would be just as bad in a traditional class setting. I had one online class where we all had to do an essay and post it on Tuesdays by 11:59pm. Then we had to reply to someone who chose a different topic than ours by 11:59 on Wednesday. It was incredibly inconvenient under the best circumstances. You cannot do it early, as your work depended on your classmates. Want to guess how many people did it early? Me. Then if someone did manage to write an essay early, there was a 1 in 3 chance it was the same topic you wrote. And don’t even get me started on the incoherent messes that were posted. I mean, how can you constructively respond to someone who sounds like they ran their essay through Babelfish a dozen times and looks like they use punctuation as decoration? Oh, and while almost no one did their work early, very few people ended up doing it on time, either. Having your students’ work depend on other students’ work is very risky, especially when you’re a horrible instructor who accepts late work with no penalties and gives a tiny turnaround time. So I managed to get everything in on time, but it was extremely frustrating and made the class more stressful than it needed to be. I couldn’t figure out why we couldn’t have 48 hours (as was the standard in every other class I’d taken at that school). I found a student who happened to be in another of that same prof’s class. Their work was due on Thursday, reply on Friday. They were getting screwed too! It would have been so much better if we were on a Tues-Thurs schedule and they were on a Wed-Friday schedule, but the prof liked to compartmentalize, apparently. This wasn’t a problem through the whole school, but just one instructor who was freaking insane (there were many, many other things she did that were crazy. This was sane in comparison) and didn’t think about the ramifications. The attitude would have been “You make this a priority” instead of having the class reflect the needs of its students to a reasonable extent instead of the instructor’s needs (which she would complain about at length and then delete all her messages.) [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-are-colleges-slow-to-accommodate-working-students/609945.md?page=1)