As a parent, do you wonder how often your student will skip college classes? How will I know?
There’s really no way of knowing unless he tells you. He may have a good excuse saying “Mom/dad, I have a huge test coming up in a few hours and unfortunately I would be skipping my class as I’m studying” now it’s your respond of how you feel and say your opinion. I’ve done it before, but sometimes I don’t notify them
Why would you need to know?
You would know if they tell you and/or they have a professor who docks students for skipping class.
Back in my day, I rarely skipped class. But I did sleep through a few.
I think that there is a lot that we don’t know when our students go off to university/college. We have to trust that they have learned enough over their first 18+ years to do well on their own, or at least largely on their own.
I am confident that my kids are going off to university better prepared than I was. We survived it. I expect that your kids and mine will survive it too.
We find out a bit more when they call, and when their grades come back.
Yes, I figure my kids are adults now and it’s up to them how they manage their time. They tell me their grades each semester and they’re good. Even my son who struggled in high school is making the Dean’s list in college. 
If your child is struggling enough that you need to worry about skipping classes, he or she might be better off attending school nearby you. That was the case with my oldest son, because of his mental illness. That’s a special case, though.
Because they told me, I know both S and D at large state universities skip lecture classes regularly preferring to watch via pod-cast. They attend the smaller discussion sessions. Grades are fine.
My kids don’t skip class. They didn’t in high school and are stressed out if they need to miss one in college. One daughter is an athlete and her coach gets a notice from teachers if she misses class (she went to a different section of a class and the prof thought she’d missed it). She misses very few even for her sport, and tries to go to a different section if she has a conflict.
Other one never misses. She had one teacher (Latin) who dropped their grade if they missed. She said she went even when she was really sick.
My kids have little sympathy for students who miss class and then expect notes or information from them.
I never even considered wondering about it. They are over 18 and basically adults, if they didn’t learn this responsibility by now, it is likely too late. Classes are conducted various ways - some you don’t have to attend with online stuff available, others you have to be there for every class, that is their business. I have 2 that graduated so far and very recently, and knew very little about what classes they were taking or when. Luckily, I didn’t need to be involved in those details at all. I do know they never had classes on Friday if they could make that work in any way possible.
No didn’t ever think about it. Two have graduated and one is in his last year. I am sure all three skipped at some point in time
Never thought about it. All I wondered about were their grades.
DS reports that there are classes he skips all the time, and others that he gets to as often as he can. Some classes provide additional information during class, others are nothing much more than what’s in the readings. As students get ill, travel for interviews, travel for conferences, etc., it becomes impossible to attend every class. For STEMish kids, a lot of the learning is through problem sets (psets); class is less important.
Interestingly (to me, anyway), his only non A grades have been in courses where he attended every class (French, for example). One of his professors joked with him about his never having attended a class; he got an A and did independent research with the professor, who would admit that he wasn’t a great lecturer.
You don’t know, but their grades will suffer if they do. My kid never missed a single class. She would hate to ask for notes, and I expect that she will only miss if she is too sick to get out of bed.
Some kids go off the deep end as soon as they get to college. If you think your child will let freedom go to his head, have frank discussions about expectations and responsibility beforehand. Some kids think it’s their business if they go, but I say if I am paying, it’s my business too.
S18 will likely end up with GPA-dependent merit scholarships, so he’ll have motivation to do well in his classes that has nothing to do with me. I doubt he’ll skip many classes but I’m sure he will skip some if he can learn the material on his own and there’s no attendance requirement. As long as his grades are good I don’t plan to get involved, although I will give him a pep talk about the benefits of class attendance before he starts.
@Lindagaf, I very seldom disagree with your posts on CC, and find you a beacon of sense. On this one, I have to disagree.
Perhaps it is just a matter of our generalizing from our specific students’ experiences. I agree with freshmen needing to get in the habit of attending class. But, even if the intent is to attend classes, IME upperclassmen are often off campus during the semester for interviews and conferences.
There is something similar I’ve referred to as reading list triage, for a particular reading intensive first year program. The kids learn which readings they absolutely must read carefully, those which they can skim, and those which they can take the most fleeting of glances at. It is a good skill for later in life, so I’m in favor.
In any case, parents will never really know, unless their kid is pathologically honest :))
@IxnayBob , as my child just finished her freshman year, I don’t have the experience of what upperclassmen do. If she needs to go off campus and miss a class, I won’t worry about it because I know she will figure it out. I wouldn’t expect her to tell me about it either. My point is more that if I am paying, I expect my kids to get decent/passing grades, which means attending class for the most part.
Sorry to destroy the image of good sense
Nah, @Lindagaf, you’re back in the good sense column DS is doing well, and it’s just because he’s pathologically honest (an Engineer’s trait) that I know that he skips classes. Last year, as a junior, there were many trips to NYC and one to CA, for interviews, a week in SLC for a conference, etc. Most professors understand and will make support available for the missed classes, but it’s up to the student to arrange this.
We drum into kids’ heads that skipping class is a bad thing – that the classes are part of what they’re paying for.
But in fact, they do need to learn how to pass a course without attending all of the class sessions or they will never be able to deal with being absent for graduate school or job interviews. So somewhere along the line, it’s helpful if they can find out how kids who have to miss classes (such as athletes) manage to cope.
Time management is usually not taught in HS. Some kids learn it because they are spread thin. I thought one of the off-label benefits of the IB diploma is that kids deal with being swamped, and have to pick and choose.
If they get D’s or F’s in their classes, or if their GPA falls and they lose a merit scholarship, then you can ask if they skip classes.
Some schools have strict attendance policies, and you have to go to the health center and get documentation that you are ill to have an excused absence. Some classes have policies whereby you fail if you miss more than 4 classes, or whatever. Accommodations for disabilities sometimes include excused absences.
Other schools are very loose about this and have online lectures that are considered okay as replacements for lectures but often have obligatory discussion sections.
Many students at elite schools will say that one of the best skills they got in college was to figure out what to read and not read and what to attend and not attend.
Skipping classes is not always a matter of misbehavior or attitude. It can be one of the first signs of nascent mental health issues. I never checked up on my kids but on a visit, one revealed her sort of head in the sand approach to one class, which she had then skipped 6 times. This alerted me to her state of mind. It also was the first warning I got that classes need to be dropped by a deadline to keep F’s off the transcript and get some refund!!
She is a valiant, hard-working person with some challenges and I would never check up on her with a punitive spirit and was so glad she confided in me.
So while I would like to say, it is not really something we parents need to know, I would qualify that for certain situations.