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Comment by nonrandomstring | Hacker News Reader

Money is a powerful incentive, but there's a creepy taboo around it's use to solve social problems.

For example, we have very poor engagement in some universities I teach at and I've suggested simply paying the students to attend classes.

Of course the chancellors, denes and other jumped-up administrators think I'm as mad as a box of frogs. But it's they who are utterly stuck in a tiny world-view, prisoners of preconceptions.

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> For example, we have very poor engagement in some universities I teach at and I've suggested simply paying the students to attend classes.

> Of course the chancellors, denes and other jumped-up administrators think I'm as mad as a box of frogs. But it's they who are utterly stuck in a tiny world-view, prisoners of preconceptions.

Would be an interesting experiment to say the least.

Charge $X (tuition), every day they show up to class refund $Y (something like $20?), and then at the end of the semester refund an additional amount based on final grade (a = $Z ($500?), b = $Z-250, etc.)

Basically make it so that good students get a discount compared to 'bad' students, but I feel like this would probably go up against some legal issues somewhere.

When the good students are Asians and the bad students are minorities, I can see this being canceled pretty quickly as being a racist policy. It makes sense to my engineer’s brain though. Why wouldn’t you want a meritocracy.

> I can see this being canceled pretty quickly as being a racist policy.

That's where my first thought went to as well, basically it being nuked from orbit due to racial bias.

Second thought was it would probably be really bad PR and spun as "THIS COLLEGE IS BUYING GRADES!"

Probably just stop at the attendance incentive without going into grades. It would probably be more palatable to the higher-ups if the incentive was low-key, like if it went towards your food-court balance.

Also money for grades would give people more incentive to cheat.

"I can't afford to get a B this semester."

Merit, or race, has nothing to do with wanting to attend classes.

Income and society-economic standing does. Plenty of people work jobs while going to college, a perfect attendance record is not their goal, clawing their way out of poverty is.

I went to college in my parent’s dime and skipped well over half the classes I was supposed to attend (some of which because I had intentionally double-booked them). My point is that using attendance as some sort of measure of “merit” is very divorced from the reasons students choose not to attend classes. It can be because they’re lazy and don’t care, but it’s also often (as you mentioned) because they have other things they have to do, or just don’t see the value in attending.

> My point is that using attendance as some sort of measure of "merit"

No, I'm not proposing it be a measure of merit. Or a "measure" of anything. It's an incentive to attend classes, nothing more.

> or just don’t see the value in attending.

This is the oddest and also most interesting remark. If they don't see value in attending then why are they on the course? And, if they don't see value then they are free to exercise the right not to come and to forgo the financial reward too, and surely nothing is lost?

I think buried behind some arguments here (perhaps not yours specifically) is the idea that we ought to simply make degrees something you pay for - by enrolling you get the certificate and the courses are non-assessed. In that case performance, attendance and participation become a different orthogonal quality prospects. It's a proposal that has quite some support amongst my colleagues and which I've argued for here[1]

[1] https://www.timeshighereducation.com/campus/fear-zombie-stud...

Well I can tell you I didn't attend classes I thought were not worth going to. Usually this either meant that I already knew the material, could learn the material externally (either because lecture slides got posted, or I would just go look up things myself), or I thought the class itself was irrelevant.

Did you miss the bit about grades?

It was a more thorny discussion I didn't feel like I was interested exploring.

OTOH stipends based in academic excellence do exist, all the way to balancing off your tuition.

They are few and far between though, for rare star performers, not a program that covers every student.

A daily reward would be much more psychologically motivating than a stipend.

You could paint this as "rewarding good students", but it's also just as likely to punish students in situations beyond their control, or in situations which aren't ideal.

As someone who had to juggle a full-time job, in high school, and occasionally overslept and missed classes, I can't imagine the frustration I'd have felt at, despite good faith attempt to make my life work, being punished monetarily for not doing better.

One of the reasons I dropped out was that, despite my 3.7 GPA, my attendance record was a constant source of friction with the administration. It was exhausting having to jump through hoops, get lectured, and be treated like a poor performer all because, in my opinion, I didn't have a family that could support me while I focused solely on school.

Thanks (sincerely). you help me make my point here.

I hear your emotional argument. That situation sucks. I'm sorry you didn't get that support and I deal with lots of students in the same situation and it grieves me.

But I question the "zero sum" reasoning. Is the enemy of my enemy always a friend? Is my loss your gain and vice versa? If we punish some people is that the same as rewarding all the others? Does that mean we ought never reward anyone for anything ever? :)

That's what I meant about the "weird taboo". Because I am sure you wouldn't venture the argument that by giving some students higher grades for their performance I am effectively punishing some others for not studying. So, why does money suddenly change everything?

Of course it's a zero sum game - the reward is coming from the tuition people pay. Disadvantaged students end up sponsoring the advantaged ones.

Sorry I don't follow. Can you elaborate a little please?

The money has to come from somewhere. If person A (the person you responded to) and person B (someone who has no trouble attending all classes) both pay $1000 dollars tuition, and person B gets $200 back because of the incentive scheme, you could also have made tuition $900 for both of them.

Net result is that person A (disadvantaged) pays $100 extra tuition and person B (advantaged) pays $100 less.

Your maths is sound, but by defining it as a closed system maybe you're missing the social dimensions, such as the "disadvantaged" student would now be "advantaged" by attending. The rebated money would mitigate their problems attending since money is an immediate and universal value whereas grades have specific and deferred value.

It also misses the reality that university funding is complex. Students fees are one of many income streams which include industry, donors, alumni, government, property investment and a whole lot more.

If you think the money can come from outside of the system (a new source specifically and only for this purpose) by all means it sounds great, people paying less for school, and people being able to treat studying as a job that brings food on the table seems great. I think treating the system as closed is more realistic though, and in that case it’s redistributive i.e. zero sum.

Edit - of course something I was missing in this comment is possibly increased efficiency inside the system. It’s thinkable that higher average attendance would result in higher pass rates and lower educational costs. If that turns out to be a significant effect it might not be zero sum (though I’d personally still not favor such a system for reasons I mentioned in a different comment).

Money changes everything because you can't pay your rent with good grades.

As a student who used to get good grades with low attendance, I would have found such class refunds very annoying and patronizing. It also gives students who are well-off a lot more flexibility in how they structure their time than those for whom the money matters.

Putting a disincentive on resits on the other hand seems reasonable because those come at a cost. I'm not sure that that should go so far as to put a higher reward on higher grades though - trading off high grades for (e.g.) extracurriculars seems entirely reasonable to me and not like something that should be discouraged, and in general a focus on grades rather than learning seems somewhat unhealthy.

Paying students for classroom attendance is standard for military universities. You may try to speak to professors there. I heard it yields quite a difference in performance of average students.

Thanks, I was not aware this practice had precedent, sounds like the way I'd like to teach, I'll dial up some old contacts. As professors we get mostly stick and precious few carrots in British universities.

This would MASSIVELY increase engagement in schools. People still act as though it's a no-brainer to go to college, but when you have to take a significant amount of time to do it and pay your way through it it's like a perfectly-designed ultimate resource-suck on your life. If you don't get it done right after secondary school before you have a "real job", good luck trying to fit it in with your work, not to mention your social life.

Also let's not forget how many universities have endowments that are tens of BILLIONS in value. Tuition isn't even a drop in that bucket.

Basically it’s a scholarship with a different reward granularity. Instead of paying per semester, pay per class.

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