5 ms·

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 o

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.

saagarjha 4y ago
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.
- nonrandomstring 4y ago
  > 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-student-apocalypse https://www.timeshighereducation.com/campus/fear-zombie-stud...
  - saagarjha 4y ago
    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.

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.

saagarjha 4y ago

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.

nonrandomstring 4y ago
> 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-student-apocalypse https://www.timeshighereducation.com/campus/fear-zombie-stud...
- saagarjha 4y ago
  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.