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Comment by WalterBright | Hacker News Reader

> logging their absence into a campus database that tracks them over time and can sink their grade.

Fortunately, I attended a college (Caltech) that as institute policy did not take attendance and no part of the grade was based on attendance.

The result was nobody was disruptive in class, because if students didn't want to attend, they didn't attend.

I remember sitting in class as a freshman thinking about this and enjoying being treated as an adult for the first time in my life. Nobody was telling me to go to class, admonishing me for not going, giving me credit for attendance or docking me for not.

The freshman EE class professor was famous (infamous?) for scheduling his lectures at 8AM, because he only wanted the interested students showing up at them.

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I attended a private high school that gave us a remarkable degree of freedom at a young age. We were allowed to drive off campus as upper classmen, choose a wide range of electives, and generally were treated as the near-adults we were.

Recently I read that my high school is instituting a random drug testing policy. I wrote a letter (that I'm sure they promptly ignored) saying how the thing I most remember about my high school experience is that I was trusted with a high degree of autonomy, and in return I was expected to act responsibly and to think about issues with a seriousness not often expected of teenagers in our society.

It seems like more and more these infantilizing policies are becoming a norm in our society. Instead of trusting human beings and granting them personal autonomy and responsibility, we act like imposing ever-greater layers of rules and controls will produce good citizens. Frankly I think this is a disastrous approach and is creating entitled, helpless, and childish adults. It's a massive disservice to ourselves and our society.

I'll never forget my first day of college. Lots of the other kids in my dorm were running around like crazy people. You could tell they'd never really been free to be themselves and run their own affairs. I felt very different. While it was a significant change to be totally on my own, it felt like a natural extension of the freedom I had slowly been granted over the previous two or three years. I was ready to deal with it. I didn't do everything perfectly, and I could have made better decisions, but by and large I felt like the transition to adulthood was comfortable and natural. The more we impose these command-and-control models, the more I fear we are robbing our children of that same feeling and casting them into adulthood with poorer tools than we were given.

St. X in Cincinnati?

I feel like in the case of schools, there legal risks they have to face that cause this. If something happens to a student while that student is in your care, you get the blame. If the school restricts freedoms they're simply reducing their legal risk.

It's a shame. I agree with you that giving students more and more freedom as they grow is tremendously helpful to their ability to adapt and be responsible by the time they reach adulthood.

Is the legal risk different now from back then? If so then maybe those legal decisions weren't great. Maybe they were. But at least worth revaluation.

I think it is. I think people used to be less litigious, so schools had less to worry about. The law was certainly less complex, providing less potential risk than it does.

Additionally, I'd be willing to bet school districts have dedicated legal departments, or lawyers on retainer these days and I'd bet that's a recent change.

I think this is mostly a media driven perception that lawsuits have been increasing when in fact the trend is that tort awards and causes of action have been restricted. If you’re a school administrator wanting more control its easy to say “lawsuits” but I bet these people are not doing research on lawsuits for students leaving campus in their jurisdiction.

I tend to agree with you. I witnessed that simply expecting people to behave had the result of people living up to those expectations.

As for me personally, being dropped into Caltech was like going from 0 to 60 in 5 seconds. I didn't even know how to do my own laundry :-) Getting from LAX to the campus by myself across LA was a very intimidating experience. These days parents bring their kids to college and even set up their quarters for them.

I’m almost 2 years into my first job after college and sometimes the amount of freedom I have continues to delight and baffle me.

Like if I want to go to the movies on a weeknight - I can do that. If I want to travel out of state on the weekend, it’s no problem. Like, there’s nothing stopping me.

Always treat life that way!

Wow, so are you saying that being in-college was not like that for you?

If so, that's disturbing given that college was once the time for young people to enjoy their freedom to the fullest. I remember driving from upstate New York to Boston one weekend on a whim with some friends - in the middle of winter, a memorable adventure.

I think the comment is saying that that freedom began in college, but that freedom is still exciting and new.

I somehow managed to be person who least attended my last three years of high school. Which is pretty unusual for someone on the highest, 3rd-tier track which over here is what you need to do to attend college. For comparison, the 1st-tier is stereotyped as pot-smoking dropouts who can only go to vocation schools after finishing high school.

I didn't realize that my attendance was tracked, because there was a pretty laissez-faire attitude all-around. Most teachers liked me because when I did show up, I was actively present, and the only moment that might've caused me to suspect something was a conversation with a teacher who, in a very friendly way, told me he couldn't give me copies of the notes from the past year because my attendance had been abysmal.

Still, I didn't really think about any of this until the principal called me in and told me he should really expel me. And yet, he was sympathetic to my situation (severe anxiety) and let me off the hook because my grades were okay.

And so in the final months before college I stayed, made sure to attend classes, and finished with acceptable grades.

The very next year (in part perhaps because of me?) the school modernized their systems and I had to listen to the tales of woe from my younger siblings at the same school. None of them could get even close to my behavior because everything was tracked, quantified, part of the new computer system.

My sister got diagnosed with severe ADHD and one of my brothers went for the third-tier track even though he's just as smart as I am.

I'm convinced that the increased measurement and decreased freedom affected them negatively, and I find it very worrying that the siblings that went on to college seem to have similar issues (because, of course, at university I was one of the least-attending students who somehow still got along with the professors and had decent grades).

To be clear, I'm not excusing myself. In hindsight I wish had attended more and put in more effort and played the game better. I'm just saying that I at least had the freedom, in high school and university, to do things my own way and still do okay. this strikes me as very difficult for my younger siblings, because so much more is measured and quantified and required.

Caltech of a few decades ago was great... but even it isn't exempt from the infantization that's been happening everywhere. (Just talk to any of the current undergrads or recent alums -- a shift started happening with some new deans towards the late 2000s/early 2010s and hasn't stopped.)

As an example of this -- one of the comments below mentions iClickers. Those have been a thing for a few years now (mostly bio, but still).

> Fortunately, I attended a college (Caltech) that as institute policy did not take attendance and no part of the grade was based on attendance.

I attended Caltech (BS '01) and given that they allowed us to take exams home with us, it would have been surprising if a professor took attendance. This was part of the overall honor code (http://www.admissions.caltech.edu/explore/about-caltech/hono...) that looking back, I really appreciated as a student.

Currently attending Caltech (BS ‘22) and thankfully it is still the same way now. If nothing else, it helps a little to take the edge off of the rigor and difficulty (at least, in my opinion). Specifically, if my finals are going to be ~4 hours long each, at least I can choose when and where to do them :-)

Nice to see that Caltech still operates that way! The Honor System there had a very large and positive influence on my later career and interactions with others.

In college right now, and last semester I had an experience similar but someone different in my data structures class. The professor didn't take attendance, and stated that while we didn't have to show up,

a. It was strongly recommended in order to do well in the course (a difficult honors course), and

b. He wanted to make the class interesting enough that we wanted to show up.

The class almost always had perfect attendance. It opened my eyes so much.

Yup. The difference, though, was this was your professor's choice, while at Caltech it was institute policy.

My school was the same. The teachers told us straight up, they didn't care if we showed up or not, we were paying to be there, the teachers got paid the same whether we showed up or not and in the end, if we chose not to show up for a lecture, there's a good chance we wouldn't know the material well enough to pass the tests on it anyway, so our grades just always reflected our own efforts. I remember missing one stats lecture, for a good reason, and being nearly completely screwed over for a bit after that. I ended up having to teach myself the stuff I missed just to stay caught up.

At my college, the professors that took attendance were almost always the worst ones, teaching GEs to a lecture hall of a hundred students that had no reason to care, and ultimately did little to improve learning. I think if any of the upper division major-related professors tried to force attendance, they’d be laughed right out of the room. But the ones worth going to had steady attendance anyways, even if they put up lecture notes or slides, because they were often genuinely useful lectures to go to.

The proliferation of data platforms and fancy tools makes it easy to build dashboards, etc.

One former colleague is doing a lot of research and statistics gathering by correlating use of campus swipe cards to grades and other academic warning signs.

If they detect that you’re out late, using soda machines at 3am, bugging out for the weekend, etc they may trigger some of sort intervention.

An intervention for staying up late and leaving on the weekend? Is this a college or a daycare?

I think I subsisted on something like 4 hours of sleep. There was just too much fun going on.

"Smith. 6079 Smith W. Yes, you! Bend lower."

Sounds like a glorified daycare

The only time I used a soda machine at 3am was when I was pulling all nighters in the library

I remember when I went to university, that in first year the biggest difference was between those who went to private schools and public schools. In private schools, the schools were stricter on attendance and teachers, helped you in such a manner that you didn't know how to help yourself. Whereas at public school, teachers didn't care if you attended class. teachers would help you if you didn't understand something, but in a manner that helped you be more self sufficient.

I think, at least with my group of friends, those from private schools had more growing up to do in a shorter period because they came from schools that over-supported them, so they weren't prepared to be self sufficient.

This sort of thing doesn't work at schools that don't have such a high bar of entry. Caltech can afford to treat their students like adults, because they're picked from the cream of the crop.

On the other hand, schools like the one I went to would have a horrible(r) matriculation rate if students were not forced to attend certain classes. It infuriurates me (and I think students who want to fail should be allowed to fail), but ultimately it's a product of the financial incentive structure; more graduates = more $$$.

And forcing attendance of some classes does indeed increase the likelihood of certain borderline students graduating, nobody can deny that.

Most of those third-tier schools shouldn't exist in the first place. Immature, undisciplined students are just accumulating debt without learning much. They would be better off in community college or working for a while. Then once they gain a little more life experience some will figure out what they want to do and have enough motivation to return to school.

> Most of those third-tier schools shouldn't exist in the first place

I disagree. I was offered admission to zero first rate schools, two second rate schools ($$$$$$ tuition), and my backup which is a third rate school (which I am attending for free).

If my backup school didn't exist, I would either be without a degree, or my parents would have a significant dent in their retirement. I'm willing to put up with the BS of third rate schools so that I can at least have a degree and not be scalped, thank you very much.

I'm grateful that my third rate school exists, no matter how shitty it is.

I will grant you, however, that no school should knowingly take $$$$$ from students and give them an useless degree. But a CS degree? It's pretty cool that I can get that from any school and it's the "same" level of degree whether it's from Caltech or Arizona State.

Well put, thank you.

Virtually all universities in Sweden do the same, and it works fairly well even in those with a very low bar of entry. And while our universities are not for profit they still do get funding based on number of students who complete courses. Do we really want tons of unmotivated students in the classrooms?

I don't understand how not tracking attendance is treating adults like adults. Your workplace will track your attendance until you retire. It's pretty normal.

Just because a student has issues with discipline or motivation I shouldn't let them fail. Tracking attendance improves academic results so I'm not sure what the advantage is to not tracking it.

Workplace attendance tracking is certainly not universal.

When I teach classes, if a student does not perform the requisite work to complete the course, I’ve no interest in their success. I am an instructor, not a motivator.

For the vast majority of jobs being absent a full work week without approval means you don't have a job the next week. Why does being an adult university student mean you can be absent for months and still succeed? It has nothing to do with adulthood.

And why do we need instructors? Let's just give each student some textbooks and their exam schedule. If they can't succeed we're not interested in their success.

The Darwinist argument can always be used to withdraw any and all levels of support. You can't use it to justify just the level of support you prefer.

In a job, you are being paid to perform a service. If you take the money and do not perform the service, you can expect negative consequences.

As a college student, you are paying to receive a service. The college fulfilled their obligation that you paid for. Your only obligation is to pay the bill that you agreed to. You are not obliged to make use of the services provided.

It's not the same situation at all.

So the adult argument has fell through. Now it's about being a customer.

Service providers can fire customers. If you pay for membership of a club but never attend functions, the club will end your membership.

If the service aims to provide a community or is invested in the success of its customers then it should fire customers who are not invested in their own success.

Not to mention how many students are not customers. They are sponsored by parents and scholarships and heavily subsidized. All these stakeholders have a vested interest in academic success. Tracking attendance is better for all of them.

If Caltech isn't the place for you, that's fine - there are many other choices. It was the place for me.

The adult argument didn't fall through. If you pay a psychologist for an appointment and you don't show up the psychologist will happily arrange another appointment and gladly receive the money. You are comparing a job to university but they are not comparable in this way.

The adult argument has absolutely fallen through because adults' attendance is tracked in another situation. So it's not a matter of being adult. It's a matter of what the specific relationship is of the student to the university.

It's ironic you mention psychologists. Therapists, personal trainers, life coaches, and other 1-to-1 service providers are the most likely to fire a customer for not attending. I personally know someone whose vocal coach made an ultimatum about attendance and ended up firing the customer. This is all very much adult.

In the end it's the sad consumerization of higher education in America. The pricing makes students so bitter as to demand "better service" rather than "better education". A university is more like a job in most of the world.

> For the vast majority of jobs being absent a full work week without approval means you don't have a job the next week.

College isn't a job for the student, it's a training and certification program that the student is paying for. The accreditation agencies that validate that the program is appropriate for the certifications being offered generally do not require attendance tracking, because regularity of attendance isn't what is being certified.

> Why does being an adult university student mean you can be absent for months and still succeed?

Attendance tracking in schools for children serves a number of purposes related to the fact that the students are children, including that students are not entrusted to review the syllabus and evaluate the level of engagement required for success on their own. Most students can't be absent for months and succeed, and if they try they will fail. Attendance tracking isn't needed for that if your assessment, grading, and academic standards are working properly (and attendance tracking doesn't fix the problem if they are not.)

> And why do we need instructors?

Because those are among the educational resources students are paying for (though there are universities where that is less the case than traditional universities, such as the competency-based WGU, which has won high praise from many corners.)

I disagree. I went to the University of Canterbury (the New Zealand one), the bar to entry was literally to pass your high school exams.

We were treated like adults, and attendance was entirely optional for most lectures and tutorials. If you failed a paper because you didn't go to any lectures, that was your problem.

I don't think you're disagreeing with me here. It's just that your school doesn't care that much if students fail because of their own negligence. Mine does, because that looks bad or something.

I totally agree with your school's stance, but I acknowledge tha the current financial incentive structure prevents my school from having the same.

If you fail out, it's not just your problem though. It's also the taxpayers who paid for the school that the student wasted.

That remains true whether that's a Scandinavian model of fully-paid schools, a US public university model of a partially taxpayer funded & partially student funded or even a private university if it ultimately results in a taxpayer funded loan forgiveness or other subsidy.

Rate of dropouts is probably priced in. Plenty of people in the U.S. drop out of public education before they've completed it as we..

> Caltech can afford to treat their students like adults, because they're picked from the cream of the crop.

The cream in terms of demonstrated capacity for academic performance, which probably has very little correlation to readiness to be treated as an adult. There selection criteria is why they can afford to have rigorous coursework as the basic freshman core, but not why their decision to treat the young adults attending as adults works.

If anything, that policy is part of the selection system: the people that aren't ready for that treatment don't cause problems for other people as much as they would in other systems, they just fail out fairly quickly.

> has very little correlation to readiness to be treated as an adult

My words may have been misleading. What I'm trying to say is the kind of student that gets admission to Caltech is not the kind of student to neglect going to class out of laziness or whatever and fail out because of that.

> is not the kind of student to neglect going to class out of laziness or whatever and fail out because of that.

Well, I was. I tried repeatedly to skip class and still pass. It did not work. The low point was finals week, first semester, sophomore year. I was looking at flunking out. I had serious pain in my gut from stress.

I squeaked by.

That was it for me. I decided that I was never again going to miss a lecture, always take notes properly, never again skip homework (doing homework was not required), and I would master every single homework problem on time.

That worked for me. I started getting B's, eventually turning into A's.

> This sort of thing doesn't work at schools that don't have such a high bar of entry.

This was the policy at the community college I went to. No one took attendance, and it was the students' responsibility to make sure they did the work and prepared themselves for exams if they chose not to show up.

I think adults should be treated like adults, no matter the bar for entry into whatever organization they're part of.

Other elite schools take attendance and don't have an Honor System.

One interesting consequence of this is the faculty and students become collaborators rather than adversaries.

What elite institutions take attendance?

While I was at UChicago, we had courses with a participation grade - so attendance was effectively taken whether or not a teacher recorded it every class.

At LSE, they used iClickers while I was there for a few lecture hall courses. At least one (LSE100) requires attendance unless one wants to miss their chance of getting a First on the module.

Not terribly related, but I personally think it’s really cool that you went to Caltech! It bums me out that Caltech doesn’t have as many associated giants of the tech world as e.g. MIT or Berkeley, which might just owe to Caltech’s smaller size, so I always love it when I learn about an awesome alum like yourself :-)

If you don’t mind me asking, what Hou(v)se were you in?

Page.

Caltech is quite a bit smaller, only 130 undergrads in my graduation class, or something like that (don't recall exactly).

Bill Gross is likely the most famous alumnus of my class. Quite a few in my class (79) became quite wealthy in the tech business, though not the really big money.

Hal Finney was the most famous of the class ahead of me. His dorm room was next to mine. My only brush with fame! Hal was one of the good eggs.

A Rudd myself, but I have some good friends in Page.

That is really interesting that your class size was only 130, AFAICT nowadays they're ~240. At least, the classes of 2022 and 2023 were in that ballpark. (I wonder if Caltech has become less selective, or has just received more applicants?)

Idealab has an active presence on campus even today, so Bill Gross seems to have left his mark :-)

> Fortunately, I attended a college (Caltech) that as institute policy did not take attendance and no part of the grade was based on attendance.

One pushback I've heard from administators on this idea is that it's really hard to answer certain Federal aid questions when the student drops out, like 'when did they last attend class?' if you don't take attendance. And the student Visa programs apparently require attestations about both attending and passing classes.

I remember a huge cry went up when our class was told our lecture would be a 9am. At which our head of dept told us "this isn't a holiday camp!" haha

Do people have experience with disruptive behavior in college? I would expect it to be a lot less common due to fewer demands of uninterested students to take classes and professors having both more power and less of a need to get everyone across the finish line.

In my experience, uninterested students just slept or played on their phone

But that's CalTech.

Caltech, lower case t.

…and?

It’s an outlier among outliers. Saying students at CalTech are motivated to study and go to class is like saying grass is green. It has little to do with the study habits of the other 99.99% of college kids.

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