Imagine going into a store and buying a delicious chocolate cake drenched in a giant vat of mind-numbing flavor.
Now imagine the guy at the register telling you that you must eat it all right now or you fail.
OK, the example is a bit exaggerated and poorly executed but the point is: Instructors need to stop regulating attendance in classrooms.
In the analogy, the chocolate cake obviously is your tuition; the guy at the register is the instructor controlling what you can do with your cake.
Now would this guy tell you what to do when you obviously just bought the cake and am now the owner of it?
It’s yours. You paid for it and you can do what you wish with it, right? Right?
So why do thousands of kids pay their tuition and fail out of college classes based solely on their attendance? Obviously missing classes means the course work is not learned which means you fail anyway, but this is beside the point.
In my experience, there have been times where attendance means getting an extra hour of sleep, or a chance to organize my fantasy football teams.
Face it, there have been classes in everyone’s college experience where they realize, “I don’t have to show up and I can still pass”.
But of course attendance in that class is a requirement.
In fact it would be financially smarter to make a rule to not enforce attendance at all. Think about it.
Kid pays school $2,000. Eh, correction: Kid’s parents pay school $2,000. Kid is informed that attendance is optional. Kid misses some classes and fails out because it’s his first semester. Kid tries again, only harder, second semester.
Attention Sacramento State, that’s a free $2,000 for every kid who learns the hard way that you need to show up for classes. There are at least 2,000 kids that will do this a semester.
That’s $4,000,000 a semester. Maybe then we can upgrade some of those computers in the student union that take six to eight hours to boot up.
There’s always the argument that this will increase the dropout rate and these kids will go all anarchist, do meth, and ruin their lives. Well if that’s the case then Darwin had a plan for them anyway.
What happened to those stories you heard from older friends or relatives? “College is so sick, you don’t even have to show up if you don’t want to.”
On second thought, those ended up being the guys who got hooked on hardcore drugs and now collect unemployment checks for no reason at all. Bad example.
Point still being: Attendance requirements for college-level courses are a joke. You pay money for something and still get slapped with restrictions on what you can and can’t do.
You buy tickets to a football game and you don’t show up. Do they call you later and tell you that you failed? No.
You buy a book and don’t read it. Does the author come to your door and say, “Excuse me, who died on the shipwreck in chapter six? Oh you don’t know? Fail”? No.
So why when you pay for tuition does a teacher threaten to fail you if you miss three classes?
Sorry to cut things short but my econ class just got dismissed; it’s always annoying being the last one out the door.
On an entertaining note, here are some San Francisco laws I stumbled upon:
Elephants are prohibited from strolling down Market Street unless they are on a leash.
It is illegal to wipe one’s car with used underwear.
It is illegal to pile horse manure more than six feet high on a street corner.
God Bless America.
6 comments:
what about Humphery's rule of -20 points for going to the bathroom? ridiculous much? i think so...
i think it's 40. haha oh, i love it.
There's one flaw in this column that knocks most of the legs out from under it - the tuition that is paid by students in the California State University represents about 25 percent of the actual cost of providing the classes, etc...Maybe it's hitting 30 percent with the latest round of fee increases.
So the notion that it is all the student's (or parent's) money doesn't hold up.
Perhaps paying the full cost, without taxpayer subsidy, might be an interesting column to write at some point. Would people pay $15,000 to $20,000 per year to go to Sac State?
Hmmm...
Beyond that tripline, the column has a lot going for it: lively writing, some good analogies and a breathtakingingly honest look at students and student life.
The column could have also looked at some of the specifics of attendance rules to show the absurdities. Doesn't someone in Comms have a rule about losing points if you go to the bathroom?
"Gotta pee? Get a C..."
Also the SF laws at the end are amusing, but don't add a lot to the overall piece where they are placed... Maybe they could be put up higher, as contrasts, or to show other absurdities in the world...
I'll pretend I didn't read the first part of your comment. That takes some wind outta my sails.
I added the SF laws kind of as a bonus, I didn't know if it would make sense if I put it in the column itself.
Going into specifics of attendance rules will actually be something I add tomorrow. Homework, then work means I'm done for the night
Thanks Michael
interesting post. although being the daughter of a college professor who has mandatory attendance, it also makes things easier for her. she spells it out in her syllabus and it's accepted as fact. some of her colleagues who, in the past, have not regulated attendance find students who fail classes are not very willing to admit their own fault for not showing up and instead place that blame on the professors. yes, we're all adults here and should be able to make decisions about whether or not we need to show up to class, but the truth is that many many college students are still trying their hardest to avoid responsibility. making them go to class puts the responsibility back in their court, if that makes any sense.
and anne - just be witty and charming with an edge of sarcasm to get on humphrey's good side and you can get away with most things. it worked for me.
Yeah, as I was writing it I began to see the other side of it, too. It's an easy debate topic where both sides have good points.
It's just a shame that college-level courses still take off points for not showing up (even if the class is really easy)
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