Stupid Attendence Policy

[radiocerk]

Most of the schools I have seen with strict attendance policies are overcrowded. And if you're not going to show up to classes, let someone who will have your spot. If you can learn everything you need from the textbook, read the textbook and test out of the class. A lot of people can't do that though. And if the teacher has to constantly be two class sessions behind to try to catch up with the people who can't be bothered to show up, everyone else's education suffers.

[Rageaholic]

Well, there are always assholes wherever you go, and some of them work in higher education. As important as I think attendance is, automatic failure after missing 3 classes seems to be a bit much, unless it's a lab or an acting class where you can't learn unless you're there. Our class has a certain percentage of the total grade for attendance, and each unexcused absence means the loss of one percentage point. (Those who miss a lot also lose participation points, since you can't participate unless you're there.)

That's actually a lot more reasonable. I've had teachers and professors in the past who would grade attendance, making it somewhat mandatory, but not in a way where you would flunk out for missing a few. My problem with this schools policy is that it's for all classes, meaning all teachers have to abide by it.

I also agree with mental health days. Sometimes you need time to wind down. Typically, I use those days to catch up on other classes and assignments. Students should be trusted to catch up if they fall behind or have to miss. Unfortunately, those kind of policies don't give students that chance.

[Greenday]

As I said, if you are sick, go to your school's health center.

If have psychological issues, go to your school's psychiatrists. Tell your teachers the first day of class and they'll cut you slack most likely. If you've shown up for every class, then all of a sudden skip a day because you claim you have PTSD, it might just seem like an excuse for a day off. If you warn them in advance that you have it, it won't seem like an excuse.

[guywithashovel]

I work for a college. Here is this college's attendance policy.

If the class is a four hour class, you can miss up to 14 hours of class time before you are automatically withdrawn from the class. If the class is a five hour class, you can miss up to 17 hours of class time before you are automatically withdrawn from the class. All of our classes meet once per week. Four hour classes are four hours long, and five hour classes are five hours long (pretty self explanatory). So, if you miss one whole class day on a four hour class, you've missed four hours of class time, and you now have only ten more hours you can miss before you are automatically withdrawn from the class.

The only excused absence is getting deployed (for someone in military reserves). For ALL other absences, you get the hours deducted, and if you reach the limit, you're yanked from the class. Granted, this is pretty steep, but it does motivate you to conserve the amount of time you miss. The school's philosophy is that they are preparing students for a job and a career. At most jobs, you have to be there almost every day and have a good attendance record. Some may disagree with that, but that's how they see it. Personally, I can see some rationale in that philosophy.

I have earned a bachelor's degree and a master's degree, and honestly, I've never really understood people who sign up for classes and then don't show up half the time. Considering all the money they're paying for those classes, I would think they would want to get as much out of the class as possible. Unless the prof is really bad and/or lazy (which is the case sometimes, I'll admit), you shouldn't be able to get all that's possible from the class simply from reading the textbook. I'm reminded of something a former prof of mine said: "I teach more than what is in the textbook. If the university only wanted me to give you what's in that book, they should have just bought books on tape and gave those to you."

[BlaqueKatt]

I'm reminded of something a former prof of mine said: "I teach more than what is in the textbook. If the university only wanted me to give you what's in that book, they should have just bought books on tape and gave those to you."

and what about "oh hey I missed the last three classes where you went over these concepts, I read the book but didn't quite understand them, could you either take time away from the other students in class to go over them with JUST ME, or take time away from grading papers/assisting students with this weeks material to go over them after class."

Heck we had a teacher in high school that 20% of your grade was your notes taken in class*, and over half of his tests were made up of stuff from class discussions-and not anywhere in the textbook.

*your notebook had to be turned in every friday with your exam, you got it back on monday.

[Eisa]

As I said, if you are sick, go to your school's health center.

If have psychological issues, go to your school's psychiatrists. Tell your teachers the first day of class and they'll cut you slack most likely. If you've shown up for every class, then all of a sudden skip a day because you claim you have PTSD, it might just seem like an excuse for a day off. If you warn them in advance that you have it, it won't seem like an excuse.

Well, like I said, we don't really have an attendance policy, and I don't miss enough class to really tell any of my professors one way or the other.

Also a note--school psychiatrists are not nearly as effective as you think they might be. For "simple" things like depression or test anxiety? Sure. For other things? Not so much. But that's a rant in and of itself.

[HYHYBT]

Attendance ties pretty much directly into grade performance, always.

If that's true, then a blanket attendance policy is pointless, which would be another reason not to have one.

Really, it partly depends on the class. One I have this quarter is very nearly an online class: it does meet four hours a week, but that's almost entirely lab time on the classroom computers. Not at all the same as lab time in something like chemistry. Most of us also have the necessary software at home. Most days, not half the class shows up, and many of those that do don't stay long. Though I do go most days (I did miss today, because of an unexpected job interview... but agreed to the interview at that time because I didn't need to go to class anyway) a mandatory attendance policy would be, mostly, a waste of gasoline.

The only excused absence is getting deployed (for someone in military reserves). For ALL other absences, you get the hours deducted, and if you reach the limit, you're yanked from the class. Granted, this is pretty steep, but it does motivate you to conserve the amount of time you miss. The school's philosophy is that they are preparing students for a job and a career. At most jobs, you have to be there almost every day and have a good attendance record. Some may disagree with that, but that's how they see it. Personally, I can see some rationale in that philosophy.

Workplaces generally have exceptions for emergencies, do they not? Sure, it would be unusual for them all to involve the same day of the week and fall within one semester, but a serious illness, a death in the family, and a car accident (for example) are all perfectly legitimate reasons to miss work, and anyone who would fire you for being unfortunate to have all three happen within months of each other is not one you're likely to stay with long anyway. They might ask for proof, but they ought at least to recognize that sometimes these things happen.

Heck we had a teacher in high school that 20% of your grade was your notes taken in class*, and over half of his tests were made up of stuff from class discussions-and not anywhere in the textbook.

I have had exactly one teacher who graded notes. Middle school, 8th grade Georgia history and second half of 7th grade social studies. In this small school, everybody had this same teacher for both classes, so I guess he didn't see a need to explain to the 8th grade class, and I was in a different school the first half of 7th, so if there was one then I never knew it. Silly me: I'd thought that taking notes meant writing down whatever you didn't already know and thought you'd need reminding of later... and accordingly wrote down very little, and in my own way. This teacher did have the habit of writing a sort of outline format of his lecture on the board as he talked... but only late in the second year did I find out that his idea of "taking notes" was to write every bit of that down exactly as he did. Because of this, I took, in other classes well into college, to concentrating on writing down everything on the board, overhead, or whatever... which, of course, doesn't work so well in most classes, where that content isn't meant the same way.

[Greenday]

Also a note--school psychiatrists are not nearly as effective as you think they might be. For "simple" things like depression or test anxiety? Sure. For other things? Not so much. But that's a rant in and of itself.

We had psychiatrists and therapists at my college. The therapists sucked but the psychiatrists were good.

[protege]

I'm sure I've posted about my college statistics professor before. This guy--the same asshole who had a temper tantrum at the bank over the ATM being down--really was a piece of work. He actually said that if a student missed *one* class, we had to get a doctor's note for it.

Problem with that idea? What if we got a heavy snow, and I couldn't make it to school? Suppose I'm sitting in a ditch somewhere, because PennDOT decided to make coffee and donuts instead of plowing the fucking road. Would he accept a note from them? Of course not! Point being, that sometimes "shit happens," and there's not a damn thing I can do about it.

[Greenday]

I'm sure I've posted about my college statistics professor before. This guy--the same asshole who had a temper tantrum at the bank over the ATM being down--really was a piece of work. He actually said that if a student missed *one* class, we had to get a doctor's note for it.

Problem with that idea? What if we got a heavy snow, and I couldn't make it to school? Suppose I'm sitting in a ditch somewhere, because PennDOT decided to make coffee and donuts instead of plowing the fucking road. Would he accept a note from them? Of course not! Point being, that sometimes "shit happens," and there's not a damn thing I can do about it.

We got plenty of days off and lots of days where people didn't show up because PennDOT decided to have a circlejerk instead of salting the roads before snow storms.

[Eisa]

We had psychiatrists and therapists at my college. The therapists sucked but the psychiatrists were good.

We have a counseling center where they have a counseling degree but aren't officially "psychiatrists."

And then we have a psych clinic where the "therapists" are grad students getting experience under a supervisor.

I haven't checked out the counseling center, but the psych clinic was awful. My therapist wasn't all that bad in and of himself...but he was way too inexperienced to handle my issues. I don't know that it made it worse, but it definitely didn't make me all that excited about getting more therapy when the year ended. He's also the one who wrote the PTSD verification letter stuff.



Oh and with the snow/keeping you off the roads...my school is awful about that. Sometimes it's just NOT SAFE to get on the roads and go to school...and even if the school district cancels, the uni won't. The last time they canceled school was back in the '90s, and even then it was like only for classes after 4.

Thankfully, most professors are very accommodating/understanding and actually don't WANT you to try to get to school if it's dangerous [there are a lot of hills/slick roads/etc. around here].

[DrFaroohk]

I feel like there's a lot to address here, and so I'm going to be doing lots of quotes here....sorry if it appears tacky.

Signing up for the class is basically signing a contract that says you will show up to class.

Since when? I thought signing up for a class meant you pay the school money in exchange for them keeping your seat open, and if you pass the course you get credit towards your degree. I did go to college for one year, and I don't ever remember signing a contract that said I will show up for class.

"The class is NOT about the grade."

So that should mean I get the credit for the course regardless of what my grade is, just for showing up. Unless you're saying it is about the grade...which is it? The grade, or the attendance? You can't say it's all about attendance and then include the grade, and you can't say it's all about the grade and then fail someone for attendance. It reality, it's probably both, but the attendance leads to the grade. Someone who rarely shows up for class is PROBABLY going to fail anyway, but they should fail on their own merits, and not some rule someone just made up. If they can skip every single class and still pass with flying colors, they deserve their credits.

"If you are hired for a job where you have no set hours, just a "show up and sell cars", your boss cannot legally not pay you."

Of course, but this isn't about what's legal. I and everyone else here probably agrees that a professor CAN fail you for just not showing up, even if you're the top student. I believe this discussion is about whether or not it's the right thing to do. Hell, I "can" burn a professor's house down for failing me for such a stupid reason, but that doesn't mean it's ok.

"Regardless, this example has no parallels to the classroom."

Didn't someone else just bring up a work/school comparison a few posts back? I could've sworn I saw something like that....Oh yeah, it was....

"Go up to your boss and say, "If I don't receive pay when I don't show up, I should receive pay when I do show up, regardless of whether or not I do anything." I'd love to see how that works out."

All I'm saying is that there ARE jobs out there where you are required to produce a certain amount of work, not be physically there for a set amount of time. I knew one guy who was some sort of a loan officer at a bank - he had to do X dollars a month in loans, and when he did that he took the rest of the month off. Because his job was about results - the same as in school - your job is to get the grade. Prepare you for the work world? Well, there are jobs in the work world like that. Chances are people in college aren't going on to shift work.

"Lastly, college is not the same as a job. In a job, I get paid for being there and working. In college, I'm paying to learn."

Exactly. It's paying vs. performing a service. Some of these professors forget they work for the student. It's not the other way around. I know they work for the school, but seriously where does the school get its money? The students. How would YOU treat an employee who started throwing attitude at you because you didn't live up to HIS standard? Fuck the employee! He works for you, not the other way around. You pay him to do a job. A student pays the teacher to teach, not nitpick about stupid shit like how often he shows up. If he fails the class, obviously he didn't learn anything. If he passes the test and gets an A, he learned something, and obviously if passes the tests he's learned everything the teacher felt relevent enough to put on the test, regardless of what his GPS coordinates were when he learned it.

Again, to reiterate here: Let the students pass or fail on their own merits. If you can miss a quarter of the classes and still pass the final exam, you learned the material. If the final exam wasn't comprehensive of the material, that's the teacher's problem, not the students. If the student didn't learn shit and flunked everything, let it be because their grade reflected it. Amen.

[Greenday]

Didn't someone else just bring up a work/school comparison a few posts back? I could've sworn I saw something like that....Oh yeah, it was....

My situation was actually comparable to the school situation. Yours was not.

If teachers/schools wanted kids to learn only from the text books, it'd be an online college. If you don't want to go to class, that would be your best choice. A college where students are supposed to go to class would prefer students who, you know, go to class. So it only makes sense to enact policies discouraging people from skipping.

[telecom_goddess]

We got plenty of days off and lots of days where people didn't show up because PennDOT decided to have a circlejerk instead of salting the roads before snow storms.

First off to take a break from the debate this struck me funny

Also if there is inclement weather than yeah I think school policies should relax when it comes to it actually being dangerous to go out anywhere. I refuse to go to work if there is a good chance I can fall and kill myself on slick ice. Not happening.

Secondly...and I am not doing the proper quote thing here I know sorry..but DrFaroohk said:
Chances are people in college aren't going on to shift work

You wanna bet? Lots of college graduates are doing shitty jobs that do not allow any kind of flexibility, you have to show up when you are contracted to or else. By the same token lots of college graduates are not working in anything even resembling their "field" or whatever their major is in.

[Greenday]

You wanna bet? Lots of college graduates are doing shitty jobs that do not allow any kind of flexibility, you have to show up when you are contracted to or else. By the same token lots of college graduates are not working in anything even resembling their "field" or whatever their major is in.

Hm, you rang?

I was under the impression that most jobs still have set hours.