College is meant for fun, opportunity and exploration. College can also be a time of stress when keeping your grades up through exams, quizzes and attendance in some classes. Because students are paying for their degree and have graduated and moved onto the next level into college, attendance seems like it would be placed in the hands of the student rather than the professor.
The average cost of in-state tuition in Idaho according to CollegeCalc was $11,190 in 2017. University of Idaho’s tuition for 2018 is $7,488 with additional fees, including on-campus living, book and class fees. Costs for tuition could differ if coming from out of state. Because students are paying for their education and are adults, attendance should not be taken and accounted for in final grades.
Students are responsible for getting to class and maintaining attendance. Students are not legally obligated to go to class, so why should professors account attendance into final grades? College is not the same as high school, meaning attendance is not legally required.
Some courses at the University of Idaho state that if you miss more than three days, then the student receives an automatic fail. Professors also can take account of if they are on their phone during class or did notebook pages incorrectly to take away attendance days making it unfair to students.
Although taking attendance to obligate students to go to class is a good idea, in theory. However, professors should not get the power to fail students for missing classes.
This is unfair because a student could be doing very well in a class but could fail for things outside curriculum and concept of the class.
If a student needs a push while in college, there should be other factors to help them go to a class other than attendance. Students pay to be here, failing a student who did not show up to class where attendance is not required is setting up students for failure when they could easily be succeeding. We should be making things easier for students, not impossible.
A solution to this problem would be to take attendance, but not be a factor in failing of the course a student is taking. Students should have an obligation to get to class and taking attendance could push certain students to go to class. Other obligations would be for a student to get a good grade in the class, it is important to attend and take notes. Students are paying for their education and this could also be a big obligation too.
Instead of attendance being a factor of pass or fail, attendance could be used as extra credit. This would give students an obligation to go to class. This would also help grades rather than hurt them.
In the end, students at University are paying for their education. You get the outcome of what you put in, and it should be the student’s responsibility of what grade that they want to get. Students at University are all adults and are not legally liable to go to class. Attendance should not be a determining factor for pass or fail, especially if the student is exceeding in the curriculum. Solutions to this would be to finding another source to get students to go to class. Attendance could be used as extra credit, or not counted at all. Because students are not legally required to go to class, it should not be a factor in their final grade.
Emily can be reached at arg-opinion@uidaho