Take five more minutes to be angry and rant. And then call the bursar, make an appointment to walk in and get your bill cleared, and then walk over to the registrar to get your transcript cleaned up- either make the F’s go away or turn them into incompletes or W’s.
Once you do that, you can decide how many complaints to file and where. But until you do that, you’re engaging in some mighty self-defeating behavior here. Your post title asks for help- but you don’t want help. You want someone to affirm that not showing up for class and not withdrawing was the right thing to do. And what good does that do you? You want to move on with your life. So pick up the phone and call the bursar. That’s how to move on.
Take some accountability and responsibility that YOU messed up by not officially withdrawing. It was a stressful time in your life and my bet is the school will give you the benefit of the doubt if you approach them calmly and with documentation.
Jumping to conclusions, without going through the proper channels first, shows immaturity and is unlikely to get you the results you want.
This is going to sound snarky, but it’s really not: do you want to fix the problem, or do you just want someone to tell you you’re right? Other posters have suggested ways in which you could possibly fix the problem; I especially like @austinmshauri’s advice to “treat them like they are trying to help you.”
At the large state flagship at which I work, students are not dropped automatically for non-attendance.
Even if they help me, which I’m not optimistic they will, that doesn’t absolve them of the thousands of other students over the years they’ve done the same to. Could be 10,000 plus students since the recession they’ve done this EXACT same thing to. 10,000 local students with ruined transcripts and financial debts, who just gave up on higher-ed. It’s really sickening.
I’m lucky, I have personal transportation, a new job that will pay to pursue higher-ed. What about those that don’t? You don’t have money, you can’t pay off a debt, you don’t have another college to attend. You’re trapped, with no way to professionally advance yourself. Your snarky callous reply lacks compassion for those people taken advantage of.
My daughter is in high school, but she attended community college full time as a homeschooler. She was made aware right from the start that the school’s policy re attendance was that if you missed a specific number of classes you get an F. No dropping students who do not withdraw and not an F for never showing up- miss more than 3 in a semester without cause and you fail. Every school is going to make their own rules and you need to know what they are. I hope at the new school you’ll be attending you will pay more attention to their policies so you aren’t blindsided again in the future.
Friends have sent me actual university course syllabi, not a website link. Every syllabi says something about being dropped for non-attendance. So it begs the question, why do certain professors and more esteemed colleges drop students and other more desperate institutions keep ghost kids enrolled, bank the money (it’s ALWAYS about the $), and load up their transcripts with Fs? The former is far more productive, the latter is predatory and punitive. There’s no way to justify ripping disadvantaged students off.
You’re just looking to pick a fight… not a good way to try to solve your problem which will depend on a school administrator’s – yes – compassion, to help you.
Polling a few friends is not going to serve as proof of any institutional policy. Also, there is a difference between an institutional policy to drop students for nonattendance and a course policy put in place by the individual faculty.
You weren’t enrolled without your consent. You can’t be dis-enrolled without it either. How is an institution ever supposed to be in a position to know you intentions or your situation? It can’t. You have to tell it what you want to do and it will follow your directive. In this case, you assumed it should know your intentions. It didn’t.
Like I said and you ignore, I wrote the student many times to tell him to withdraw. No one was stopping him from doing so. The policy is to treat someone like a grownup. This is not “countless” students because students almost always withdraw themselves like they’re supposed to. This is literally the first time I have had to grade a student who never showed up.
And not that it matters, but one third of the spots in the class were open, so no one was kept out. Not to mention, that even if that weren’t the case, by the time it was clear the student was never going to show up, it would be far too late for another student to start the class. Actually, in an over-enrolled class, it would be the fault of the noshow student that that spot didn’t go to someone else. The rest of us aren’t mindreaders who know he/she won’t show up.
The best way to help the thousands and thousands of students that you believe have been victimized is to complete your education. Then get a job as a muckraking journalist who wants to expose higher ed fraud. Or go to law school and become an advocate for low income students whose educational access has been blocked. Or get a CPA and get hired to audit the books of institutions you think are behaving in a fraudulent manner. Or get a Master’s in social work and get a job with a non-profit which works with the homeless, returning vets, first gen students to get them on the road to higher education.
Sitting around complaining? Who does that help?
You misunderstood the policy, and you had a series of personal setbacks which prevented you from un-enrolling in a timely manner. Go state your case in a polite and business-like way, and get your bill and transcript cleaned up. Then figure out a life’s path which helps the tens of thousands you are worried about.
At Berkeley, this may only be for specific courses which tend to be full with wait lists, where the department or instructor will automatically drop a non-attending student to allow wait list students in (obviously not applicable to huge lectures where attendance is not taken).
https://registrar.berkeley.edu/registration/enrollment indicates that, under normal circumstances, students must explicitly take action to drop a course at Berkeley, even though an instructor may drop a student for non-attendance.
Can you imagine if an instructor in a large lecture class spent class time taking attendance at the beginning of every class? I took classes where our first graded assignment was either the midterm or the final, and if it was a large class, no one knew if I was there or not.
Regarding federal guidance on Withdrawals and the Return of Title IV Aid, most schools are not required to take attendance.
At the institution where I worked in IT, we had a process we could run to automatically drop students who had not made payment arrangements by a certain date, but no automatic process to run to drop for non-attendance. Our administrators encouraged faculty to watch for and report non-attendance, but depending on the class size, this could be a difficult task.
We made every effort to contact students, but with thousands enrolled, it’s a massive task to keep track of and follow up on every student who doesn’t follow through. Everyone already complains about too much administrative overhead expense, and yet there is an expectation that resources will be spent keeping track of students who do not read/respond to emails or phone calls, and do not follow the procedure to withdraw from classes per university policy.
I didn’t check the other schools mentioned, but people who are telling you that most schools will automatically drop you for non-attendance are misinforming you.
By the way, what’s going on at Berkeley is that professors with classes that have wait lists can drop someone who doesn’t show up in order to give the spot to another student on the wait list. But many classes don’t have wait lists, so professors would not bother to drop students who don’t show up. They would just give those students Fs.
This is not a sinister plot. You would do better to take responsibility for your error, and ask the school for clemency.
I guess I disagree with many on this thread. They may be technically correct but I think sometimes humanity rises to the top. I’d say meet wtih someone from the Dean of Student’s office-not student advising. Explain the situation. If you never attended they should be able to delete the f’s. There are exceptions to the usual rules when warranted. Seems warranted to me here.
Lostaccount- of course there are exceptions. But if the OP goes in swinging and assuming that it’s an evil plot to keep low income students from completing a degree if they don’t have internet access at home and can’t drop their courses officially (or make an appointment to see the bursar to withdraw, or find a stamp and an envelope to mail a letter stating “I am withdrawing”) the likelihood that humanity rises to the top starts to decrease.
In my own experiences with higher ed administrators… most of them would do anything within their power to help a well meaning, ambitious student get an education. But if the premise is “I’m calling the attorney general” before “could you please help me” all bets are off.
Outside of increasing revenue, what’s would be the justification for a college to carry on with such a policy? How does it help local students the public commuter U receives public dollars to serve? This particular school serves low income and first-generation students who have no help or guidance. Things may seem obvious to you on a college message board perch, but the average inner-city commuter U student is totally in the dark.
My friend is a CPA and she said be careful about going up to the school. They could present me with those charges, upwards of $6,000, and “reset” the clock on payment and notify credit bureaus. Lovely, huh.
It seems like you’ve just described a plot to increase revenue off the backs of ghost students and unpopular sections. All of the syllabi friends have shared from Cal et al. say nothing about “…if there’s a waiting list.” They say don’t show up for lecture #1 and #2 you’re dropped, period.
It seems like the most obvious and compassionate thing to do from a higher-ed perspective. I’m curious why any professor or college would do anything but that, unless they were only seized with revenue generation.
A small number of specific courses that have instructor drop policies do not mean that all courses are that way. https://registrar.berkeley.edu/registration/enrollment says that “You should always drop any unwanted classes from your schedule immediately. Don’t wait for or assume an instructor will drop you from a class.”
Do you expect help with your specific situation? If so, name the universities, so that those who may be more familiar with them may be able to help you.