Attendance in Higher Ed. - Why this Kolaveri Di?
Of many things that baffle me to my core - the provision of mandatory or minimum attendance in colleges is foremost. I have been arguing against implementation of any minimum requirement of attendance since the time I entered into college. Not because I ever had to face any issues because of it, I was lucky enough not to, but because it is built on a faulty assumptions and restricts liberty of students.
If you enjoy reading pieces like this, do consider subscribing to this newsletter to receive interesting posts like this straight into your inbox. I write about a range of issues from ideas, mental models, book reviews to policy analysis, law and technology etc. It’d be great to have you over!
Minors and Majors
I am not making the same argument for schools. I think schools are better off having mandatory attendance requirements. Because if you do not have one, that is precisely what most school students are going to do - not come to school. Even though irrespective of what school’s attendance requirements really are, most parents anyway are likely to send their kids off to school or be vigilant enough to make sure their wards are actually attending school. Of course, even in a mandatory attendance regime, kids can choose to not attend and just roam around. But that would invite a message from school to parents which I’m assuming most school students would not rather have happen. Most kids from 5-17 are not mature enough to function in the scholastic regime that mandatory school attendance places them into, without the attendance requirement. That’s just childhood. You are more likely to hate sitting down and studying than going out for movies or playing sports. There may be outliers, but as a policy I think the evidence (or at least what we assume the evidence is going to be via our arguments and assumptions) is strong enough to inform a blanket attendance requirement. Even though, it is indeed a moot question of what correlation attendance requirement has with ‘success’ of the students. If any.
Which brings me to the central question of why there exists any attendance requirement for college students. The key idea is that most college students are adults. We trust them to vote, drink, and do all range of activities, but we still hold a stick of inability to sit for examinations to secure their attendance? How does that make any sense? I can see the argument that if the same range of restrictions can be legitimately levied on these same people a year back, when they were 17 and in school - what difference does one year make? There are two points here. First is the fact that this is not a difference that I or someone else is manifesting. That one year gap is a statutory and cultural signifier of adulthood - of having access to the full range and capacity of what it means to be a human. Given that that is a reality, a settled one at that - the onus is on the colleges to prove on the contrary, that all of that is not applicable somehow when it comes to education, and that we need to treat adults the same way we treat minors. Second and more importantly is the core logic behind mandatory attendance. What outcomes does it hope to achieve? What evidence is this policy based on? Why do we need to terrorize the students who are putting in their time, money, effort to come to college?
Inverted incentives and faulty assumptions
There are two arguments I am aware of in favor of attendance requirement. The first is my assumption that such a mandate assumes that securing student’s presence to classrooms is a total good, that nothing bad comes out of it, and that it is in some way beneficial and a pre requisite for learning.
Let me reiterate this. The students in any college are willing participants. Willing. They part with huge sums of money in order to be a part of a university and get a degree. At what point in time does it become legitimate for an institution, which is taking money from us to impose restrictions upon our liberty? And this argument is specifically being made in the context of attendance. I am not arguing that a university should not restrict liberty of students in any way whatsoever. That would be a disaster. But when it comes to attendance, or more fundamentally - how students decide to utilize their time while being in the university - I see no principle reason for why it is legitimate for colleges to impose attendance requirement.
Most probably, the logic behind such a mandate is this.
Get students to class for at least X number of days
Presence in class must mean students will learn
Students learning means they will pass exams and do well
We want all of our students to pass exams and do well so as to maintain the reputation of our college.
In debating we call this a logical leap. It is when someone argues A leads to B, B leads to C, and C leads to D and, the linkages between A to B, B to C etc. are not actually true, or are not sufficiently proven to be true. And since the linkages are not proved, the argument as a whole is not true.
The first logical leap is while going from point 1 to point 2. I, and countless others will attest to the fact that presence in classroom is almost always the worst indicator of likelihood or amount of learning. Of all of the times I have had to attend a lecture only because of fulfilling attendance requirement - there have been zero times when I have actually learned anything. And that should not come as a big surprise. Look at the incentive. Students come for class not because they want to be in that class1 but because they are forced to be in class. Learning is seldom forceful. Or even at its best is sub standard when forceful. Which is why scaring children into studying never works out in the long term. Colleges merely replace the fear of parents scolding with the fear of not being able to sit for exams. This also tells you that colleges either do not understand how learning takes place at all (which is blasphemous to say the least. Aren’t they supposed to be the people and place to know how learning takes place?) or do not care for learning as long as they convince themselves that putting an attendance requirement will mean better scholastic results for their university, thus a better status. Status over liberty? Or more aptly, status over learning?
This raises another question - what should a university be more concerned about? Keeping its classrooms filled with students by forcing them to sit against their will, or getting good results. Because if it is the latter, a mandatory attendance mandate doesn’t really matter (since going from point 1 to 2 is a logical leap).
See, you have two kinds of students. First are those who actually want to attend classes because they are able to learn effectively in them. These students will come for class regardless of what the attendance policy is. The second type of students are those who do not want to attend classes due to any reason whatsoever (and mind you, it is one of the biggest value judgement of the Indian scholastic environment that learners, if not at school, waste their time otherwise). These students, either for better or worse have already made the trade off. When you implement a mandatory attendance requirement and force these students to attend class - it is a bad utilization of their time. Simply because they are not here by their own volition but by force.2 So if securing the presence of second section of students to class is anyway ineffective in providing them with learning, this means that such measures are least likely to have any correlation with how well the students are going to do in their exams. Which means, that mandatory attendance requirement actually, doesn’t make any sense.
Also keep in mind that all the time wasted in making people attend classes against their will increases the opportunity cost of that time. They could have done so many cool things with this time. Followed passions, discovered new interests, talked to new people, travelled new places and confronted other emotions. Also note that many students are not the best at taking decisions about what they want to study when they are 17 and land up in courses they wish to leave later. A mandatory attendance policy eats into the time that otherwise could have been spent into exploring new things and attending other classes. Take my own example. I chose to study Physics at 17. Around 20 I realized that I do not wish to continue with it. The only reason I was able to take up law was because my college was not so strict about attendance requirements. Which gave me the freedom to extensively debate all throughout college. Which then brought me to Law. If my college was like any other engineering college with impossible attendance requirements, I would have gone on to become a highly frustrated and mediocre physicist.
The larger principle is that maximizing liberty leads to better individual and collective outcomes. Better individual outcomes because now I am reading something I like to read. Collective good because if people can do what they like to do, they are likely to be good at it and be an asset to society.
But all of this is lost because of our education system’s anxiety to keep students (read: adults) chained to their desks. Without intention, without evidence.
I will not say that because they don’t want to learn - of course they do. But sometimes it is not that particular subject, or not at that particular time, or they have other more important and better things to do.
It might be justified to use force with minors (when it comes to forcing them to study). First, because they are minors, and second, because they are likely to not understand what is best for them. The reason why we cannot legitimately use force against adults is because they are adults. We assume that they know what is good and and bad for them. If this argument can be made in voting, drinking, marriage - why cannot it be made in education?