Why do so many professors have a stick up their ass about students attending class, so much so that they will deduct points from your final grade or even fail you if you miss more than a certain amount of classes?  If you miss a few classes and still score well enough on the exams and other grade requirements, why shouldn't you get credit for the class?

Discuss.

It's a respect thing, at least for some professors.

It's really that they're covering their own asses.  Ultimately, a student who is passing with flying colors and not attending class tends to illustrate that the professor isn't doing their job.

On the other hand, it's one of those things that works in your favor.  In the workplace, proficiency is less important than attendance.  An employer would rather have an employee who shows up every day rather than one with a 4.0 grade average.  When a potential employer contacts a professor, the question they ask isn't "How were his grades?"   The question asked is, "How was his attendance?"

College isn't a place where you learn.  It's simply a weedeater.  It cuts away the people unwilling to show the minimum amount of determination.

Odd. I learned an awful lot in college. My career (software engineer) would have been impossible for me otherwise.

Quote from: TechnomancerWhy do so many professors have a stick up their ass about students attending class...

While it irritates me if students don't attend class (I mean, I'm trying to help them understand the material!), I don't deduct grades from them for not showing up.  That would involve work.

And knowing their names.

Well come on, it'd be pretty depressing to hold a lecture and have no-one come.

It's more about rewarding the students that come to class, participate in the discussions, do the lab-work, etc.  You aren't getting marks deducted for not attending... you just aren't getting marks added for something the other students did that you didn't.

Oh yeah? Well how full is that glass?

Quote from: James McMurrayOh yeah? Well how full is that glass?

Well, if you had been in class last week you'd know the answer to that...

I'll just get it from someone's notes.

My university has a mandatory attendance policy with grade reduction for excessive absence which I cheerfully ignore.  As a carefully explain to the students on the first day of class, they are all adults and I will call roll only for the purpose of learning their names.  I also tell them on a practical level it is better to come to class if they want to prepare for the exams effectively and that it helps if I can remember your face when I assign the class participation grade at the end of the semester!  

I find that attendance is usually quite good, and frankly I'd rather that the ones who were not that serious about the class not feel the absolute need to be there.  The students who show up consistently are the ones who participate actively in discussions and improve the experience for everyone, including me.  Also, to be honest, having to honestly earn the students' attention means that I have to keep on my toes as a lecturer and give them something they find valuable.  It keeps me focussed and energized, and I think improves my teaching.


TGA

Quote from: TechnomancerWhy do so many professors have a stick up their ass about students attending class, so much so that they will deduct points from your final grade or even fail you if you miss more than a certain amount of classes?  If you miss a few classes and still score well enough on the exams and other grade requirements, why shouldn't you get credit for the class?

Discuss.

At my university, the only classes that deduct points for poor attendance have been lab sections.  (Which makes sense.  You are being graded on your laboratory performance -- if you didn't perform the tasks, then you get a zero for that lab.)  Professors only check attendance at the beginning of the semester in crowded classes -- if there aren't enough spots open, they give preference to people who've attended the first few lectures.

I had two professors who were excessively anal about attendance.  

The first one merely held extremely boring, pointless, and long (3 hours) lectures.  He had a monotone droning voice and was the first instructor I'd ever had in my whole life who literally put me to sleep.  The second one would also hold long lectures, but his would consist of reading our textbook to us in the form of a slideshow.  You never missed anything by skipping either of these guys' lectures as the first one never seemed to lecture on anything relating to the subject and the second one only told you what you could get by spending 30 minutes reading your textbook each week.

As I said, both were really pissy about attendance.  In addition to the school's policy of automatically failing any student who didn't show up for a certain percentage of classes, these two instructors also saw fit to deduct points for missing lectures.  Oddly, they didn't care if you missed lab (and therefore didn't do assignments), only lectures.  

The first one, Mr. Droning Boringvoice, didn't care if you slept or worked on written assignments as long as you were there to be counted present.  The second one,Mr. Slideshow, took to turning off the lights during his slideshow so no one could work on other subjects and everyone had to look at his slides copied from the book (which led to a lot of people buying light up pens to work on other things).  Both were fanatically opposed to the idea of any student turning around and actually working on computer lab assignments on the computers surrounding us.

My solution to all this was simple.  Upon examining each instructor's syllabus, I realized they weighted mere attendance much heavier than they probably should.  It was weighted so heavily that I could skip doing all remaining programming assignments, and only perform marginally on the tests (which involved no coding, all multiple choice), and still get an A.  So, I did this.  Mr. Droning Boringvoice occasionally would warn me that he didn't think I would pass his class, and he was actually mad at the end of the term when he gave me an A by his own procedures.  I was the reason he started changing his grading criteria.

Mr. Slideshow never gathered a clue and just continued his meticulously copied from the textbook slide presentations.

Interestingly, the instructors who never made a big deal about you actually showing up were the ones who ran classes where it was critical that you did so, because their lectures were invaluable and the lab time was extremely productive.  For instance, there was one instructor who everyone complained about being a hardass, but, in reality, all he ever looked at in terms of attendance was whether a student had missed the magic number of absent days dictated by the campus for an automatic failure.  He once told me, "I have to be here every day because it's important for me to do so.  My job is to make it important for you to be here too."  I feel he took a higher interpretation of "importance" than Mr Droning Boringvoice and Mr Slideshow.

Metropolitan State University, where I attend, has a top-down mandated attendance policy.  In this case, it's to account for state education funds; if the President of the university can throw a truthful attendance chart before the state legislature's education committee, then it's likely that he's ensure that the school's funding is maintained (and adjusted for inflation), if not increased.

The results are much as goes on elsewhere.  I'm due to graduate this May, after four years here, and only once has attendance actually meant shit to my grade for any reason other than automatic grade deductions.  (They can also hit you if you're late arriving or leaving early, unless it's one of a slew of legally-mandated absences.)   Only one class was one where attendance had anything to do with learning the material, and that was a Constitutional Law class; if you weren't there, you'd miss out a lot on how this actually gets used, which wasn't in the texts.  Only one other professor said "Fuck this." to the rules.  Everyone else enforced it to varying degrees, and the more they cared about it, the more they utterly sucked ass as teachers; giving a shit about it was a sign of incompetence.

Quote from: The Good Assyrian.. frankly I'd rather that the ones who were not that serious about the class not feel the absolute need to be there.  The students who show up consistently are the ones who participate actively in discussions and improve the experience for everyone, including me.  Also, to be honest, having to honestly earn the students' attention means that I have to keep on my toes as a lecturer and give them something they find valuable.  It keeps me focussed and energized, and I think improves my teaching.


TGA

All quite true of my experience as well.