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Comment by ginko | Hacker News Reader

Maybe it’s because I studied in Austria where universities generally provide very little handholding to students but I don’t understand the point of compulsory attendance in university lectures. If students think they can pass exams without attending the lectures then they should be able to do that. I certainly did that once or twice when I realized I needed some more credits before the end of the term. It’s a different thing with lab/exercise sessions but your lack of participation there would be noticed anyway.

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My university didn't take attendance either, but some in my country do. As I understand it, the reasons are:

1. Some students think they can skip class and catch up through self-study, but actually they can't. The same I'd-rather-be-partying attitude that stops them attending lectures also stops them finding time to self-study. College is the first time students' time management is put to the test, and some students can't handle it. Giving them some external motivation to get out of bed does them a favour, in the long term.

2. Some courses are discussion-and-debate oriented. Less so in engineering, moreso in arts subjects. If Socratic debate is a key part of the class, students who don't show up will of course lose grades - and accurate record keeping makes sure that's done fairly.

3. Some governments require certain reporting to ensure people getting student visas are, in fact, students. Taking attendance for foreign students is one way to satisfy this.

4. When someone fails a course they'll often lodge an appeal. Perhaps they'll say the course was badly taught, or the exam covered material that wasn't in the lectures. Knowing whether the student attended the lectures helps adjudicate such complaints fairly.

A highly ranked university that attracts smart, self-motivated students has less reason to take attendance - whereas a university with lots of students skipping class, failing and complaining has more reason.

It was the same when I studied applied physics in England many years ago. No one checked or cared if we attended lectures in the physics and maths departments. In fact anyone could have attended the lectures even if they were not a student because there was always plenty of room. But the law department where my wife studied, at the same university, did check who was attending.

As for laboratory exercises in the physics department, they were in theory compulsory but still no one checked. The final year included a long experimental project that had to be documented and conclusions defended in a viva. Again no one formally checked that we actually did it but as we were grouped into small teams for this anyone who didn't pull their weight would have been reported by their fellow students and would not have had access to the experimental results which would have made it difficult to write it up and defend.

Compulsory attendance used to be far less common in colleges, but teenagers in America mature far more slowly than they used to and undergrads are still effectively children. Universities need to babysit them or they'll wreck the dropout rate

I take attendance (the old-fashioned way) in my college classes for a couple of reasons:

- Some students are "sponsored" by scholarships or organizations that request attendance data. - I want to know the attendance record for a student who is asking for an extension, or extra-credit work, or some other informal accommodation. - I like to draw fancy graphs correlating attendance and final grades.

But other than that, I don't care if students are in class or not. They're adults. Learning is their responsibility.

I graduated University in the US in 2004. I never took a class that had mandatory lecture attendance.

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