Does your University or College take attendance?

[Agarwaen]

In mu university, here in Brazil, we have attendance (well depends on the professor, but in general we have)...

 

[.Shane.]

It really depended on the class and the teacher. All foreign languages classes had attendance, and the third time you missed class you automatically failed the class.
Other classes were much more lenient. You could study on your own, never come to class, and still pass the class.

Exactly.

I say that overwhelmingly, universities do not have official policies on attendance. My experience was that outside of massive general ed classes (300 students in an giant room) most professors took attendance. Enforcement varied as well.

I teach at the JC/CC level and I do take attendance. Mostly I use it as a stick and carrot.

 

[chinesefireball]

In all my tutes we have attendence marked - but generally they don't care if we turn up or not. Although with my maths subjects, the lecturers all say that if we are sitting just below a pass or want a supplementary exan they are more likely to be nice to us if we have turned up to tutes.

 

[Suppersalmon]

my uni does take attendance but if we dont turn up enough we get a letter in the post inviting usto turn up for a meeting disscussing our future on the course

 

[A'AbarachAmadan]

When I went to college my university did not take attendance. I rarely went to Friday classes. For the hard ones, we'd trade off going on Friday to take notes. When I started grad school and taught a Business Calculus Course, I gave a quiz every Friday to stop what I used to do.

 

[Neonanocyborgasm]

I was brought to a surprising revelation today! Apparently, colleges and universities in the United States take attendance.

Is this true?

If it is, why do you take attendance? What are the benefits of it? Is it reflected in your grades? Do you think its necessary or appropriate?

Where I live we have no attendance in University. It seems largely irrelevant to me; if you don't attend class you'll probably fail. Also, why would we want or need to keep track of adults and their attendance? It seems like a relatively "grade school" thing, so I was curious if this was true and to get opinions from around the world.

When I was in medical school, we were required to have 80% attendance. We had to sign a sheet to indicate our attendance for every class. Most classes were 2 hours long, with a break at the 1 hour mark, so I would sneak in during the break and sign in, then leave again. I was caught several times but it didn't make a difference. The policy was never enforced and there was no policy as to what the punishment should be for not attending class.

The administration used attendance as an empty threat to force people to attend class. Most professors were horrible teachers. Not only did they present the material poorly, but they couldn't even answer questions, and were so disorganized that they couldn't keep to the syllabus. Students felt like lecture time was wasted, when they could learn it better on their own, and so didn't show up to class. The administration was embarassed, especially because the brightest students were those with the lowest attendance (thereby snubbing the professors), and so instituted this attendance policy. It worked. After the policy was enacted, attendance increased markedly. The same administration would then proudly publish statistics on improved test performance as a result of improved attendance. Since the smartest students did what I did (sign the sheet without being in class), these statistics simply reflected student ingenuity, not attendance.

My opinion is that enforced attendance in higher education is stupid. If you don't show up to class, you will face the consequences. If you still ace the class despite being absent, you didn't need the class in the first place, or you're so resourceful that you don't need a professor, or the professor sucks.

 

[Moss]

Depends on the class...some don't and some do.

 

[SuperBeaverInc.]

No. But there is the occasional teacher who does take attendance.