Issue 27, Fall 2004

William A. McEachern, Editor

Campus Culture and Class Attendance

When I arrived years ago at the University of Connecticut, I was informed that class attendance, in itself, could not count towards a student's final grade (this was fresh after campus protests about the war in Vietnam and student freedom). As a teacher of large principles classes, I found the policy administratively easier than keeping attendance in a class of hundreds. I realized I could still pop quizzes to capture some attendance measure in the final grade, but I had my hands full as it was.

Anyway, attendance in my large classes typically would start out strong for the first several weeks of the semester, but would slip some after the first exam. It's not that the first exam was easy, or that I am a poor teacher (my course evaluations have been good and I won the University's Excellence in Teaching Award). I asked around and concluded that others, especially those teaching large classes, also faced some empty seats.

I was reminded of all this recently when I visited the University of Virginia to talk to a giant class of principles students. I was stunned by the packed house. I asked the instructor about it and he said that attendance has not been a problem, even though it's not explicitly part of the course grade. After the talk, a student came up and told me she had transferred from UConn. I remarked about how UVa's attendance was better than UConn's, and she said "Oh yeah, at UConn we didn't go to class." I asked her why not. She had no specifics, saying only that it was a UConn thing, and that UVa had more of go-to-class thing.

No doubt class attendance differs across instructors, courses, and departments. But do patterns differ across campuses, even those with the same attendance policies? Is there, in a sense, a culture of class attendance? New students may develop habits by observing more senior students, and in this way the culture perpetuates itself. Have any of you who have taught at different institutions observed different attendance cultures across campuses?

I carried out a brief online survey of class attendance policies by institution. Most colleges leave it up to the instructor, and some, like UConn, note that poor attendance per se cannot reduce the course grade. A minority of colleges have tight requirements. For example, Baylor University, Bluefield College, and the University of Richmond's School of Business, require that a student must attend at least 75 percent of classes to earn credit in the course.

What happens when the policy is left to the instructor? Based on an online survey of about 50 syllabi for principles of economics courses, I found policies ranging from simply encouraging attendance, which nearly all instructors do, to using attendance as a tie-breaker for borderline grades, to actually reducing the grade based on cumulative class cuts. For example, Ted Oleson of the University of Nevada, Reno, allows three misses without penalty. Four to six misses cost half a grade, seven to eight misses cost a full grade, and over nine result in course failure. Most syllabi that mention attendance tell students they are responsible for the material covered, whether or not they come to class.

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