Attendance Matters

I was at a presentation the other day on teaching and the speaker came to the subject of attendance. He asked us how it could be there is an attendance holiday in higher education? After all, attendance is taken every day for students attending K-12 education and then when students are in their careers their employer definitely tracks attendance. But for some reason far too many professors have no attendance policies in their classes.

That was when it hit me and I came off the fence on this issue. In my sales class there is a strict attendance policy because we do all the work that is needed to be done to put together a sales organization that sells a tangible product to the marketplace and does about $16,000 in revenues every semester. On the other hand, I have no formal attendance policy in my HR class but there is an assignment due for virtually every class meeting so not attending means students lose points on the worksheet, case study, guest speaker, and so forth.

Either way, from now on there will be a strict attendance policy in all my classes starting in the fall. I am going to work to advocate that my department do the same for all the classes taught in our curriculum. I urge you to do the same. There should be no attendance holiday for students -- the world does not work that way. Perhaps Woody Allen said it best, "Eighty percent of success is showing up!"