My son is in college. He is getting good grades, but he started skipping classes.
We learned that he is spending time with TA during this time.
As I google for this subject, I find
“In contrast to high school, missing a class in college can often feel like no big deal. It’s rare for college professors to take attendance, and if you’re only one student out of hundreds in a large lecture hall, you might feel like no one noticed your absence.”
I opened this thread to learn the thoughts from parents of this forum.
Did your son/daughter face such issues?
What are the consequences for missing classes?
Is it common among college students have this situation ?
The penalty for skipping class is not learning what is being taught in class. Of course, if it is something where participation is important (e.g. a lab), then there would be other disadvantages.
Consequences can vary. The problem is that it can feel like there is no consequence. Skipping classes intermittently and not feeling like there is a consequence can then become powerfully reinforcing. Then for some, skipping can develop into a pretty bad habit that can lead to significant consequences such as flunking, losing scholarships or financial aid, academic probation, etc. Your son’s results may vary.
Academics should be every college student’s priority, and attending classes is a major piece of that priority. Otherwise why attend a brick and morter college at all?
When I was in college I took a lecture class where the lectures were so bad that when a student stood up and said, “I’ve had it, I’m not wasting any more time here,” I followed him out. I continued to go to the sections with the TA (who was a far better teacher). I got a B of some sort in the course. I don’t think I’d have done any better if I’d kept going to the lectures. It was the only class I gave up on in 4 years of college. So it did not become a habit. The priority should be figuring out how to learn the material. Nearly always that will include involve attending classes, but it might not. I took Calculus self paced. I taught myself the material and took the tests. If I needed help, I went to math lab. I got an A and was invited to help with the course the next year.
At one point, you said he was having trouble getting exam grades on some par with his quiz grades. That’s a reason to attend classes. It’s not just “learning,” nor some TA time he feels is interesting. He needs to get the full gist of how the prof teaches the material. And depending on the U, whether or not they take attendance, profs can notice who’s not there (or sitting in back, doing his own thing.)
Depends on the class. In mine, each missed, unexcused discussion class negatively affects your grades. In others, it won’t other than cheating yourself out of knowledge/experience/whatever.
Personally, I skipped a lot of lecture classes where attendance wasn’t required. Mostly so that I could work. It was fine for me but I wouldn’t recommend it.
Missing class can have a negative consequence when/if said student needed anything from the professor. Professors are less likely to work with students, academically or personally, when that student is frequently absent. This may be less of a problem in universities with large class sizes. But it becomes a glaring problem in smaller classes. Even though they may not take roll, professors know when students are habitually absent. It would not hurt for the student to meet with the professor and explain why he is absent and what the issues are. The student cannot assume that the TA is communicating these sessions to the professor.
Missing small classes, labs and recitations can be a problem. Missing large lecture classes is generally no big deal - some professors put their lecture notes online. Students can usually gauge pretty well which classes can be skipped sometimes and which should not be skipped. You can probably trust your kid to handle it.
Some profs take attendance, some give quizzes in class. It is a really bad habit to skip class.
My kids never missed k-12 classes, and they never miss now. D’s school cancelled classes starting on Friday for the hurricane. D went to class on Thursday and there were 4 other students in class, but D was there, and the prof held class
Instead of random Googling you may want to go directly to his college website and search for their academic policies. Many professors state attendance requirements on their syllabus, so your son should know if they drop letter grades or not.
Is your son still a math/physics double major? If he gets into the habit of skipping classes as a sophomore, he may find it difficult to maintain a good GPA in the required upper-level courses.
I think it depends on whether there are penalties for missing class, and whether the time spent in class is valuable.
I remember, I took a 9am class from a Professor who wrote the textbook. Waking up early, going into class, you could practically follow along in the book. A total waste of time at the expense of valuable sleep. I stopped going along with many other people. Last class, apparently we all show up for the last lecture to hear what’s going to be on the final. He walks in a does a double take, laughs and says “I had no idea that there were this many students in the class.”
Other classes, you show up and feel like you should “buckle your seatbelt”. The pace, content and insight was just fantastic. With only a short pre-read, you could learn the material really well from just the lecture. Missing those would be dumb.
As a faculty member, I know that attendance correlates with higher gpa’s and retention. So I take attendance in all my classes. Most parents would be shocked at the absentee rates in college. IDepending on the point in the semester, possibility of quizzes, subject matter, etc., it can dip to 50% even in good classes where the prof takes attendance.
It really depends on the class, subject matter, and quality of the professor. There were some large lecture classes for me in college & law school where the prof was so boring and/or disorganized that class attendance made things worse – either I had difficulty sustaining attention as the prof droned on, or the lecture created confusion about material that I could better absorb and understand through reading. I’m a visual learner and can learn well in an interactive, discussion type setting – but a long lecture is often a waste of time. (Plus I’m a horrible note taker as well – I can’t listen effectively and take notes at the same time, and my handwriting is horrible – so post-class I would be left with a pad of paper filled with indecipherable scribbles and doodles).
If the class and professor was good --then I got there.
But more important: my parents never asked me in colllege about attendance, and I didn’t tell them. Nor did I ask my kids. I figured it was their business, not mine. I tended to get better grades in the classes where the profs were delivering A-quality lectures (and I was there) … but I was also more motivated in those classes. So I wouldn’t draw a direct causal connection to my attendance and grades.
I don’t remember ever running into a problem on an exam related to something having been covered in class that I missed. If it was important, it was included in the reading, and I did keep up with the reading.
I don’t think parental memories are a good gage of the current situation with retention and attendance.
As the percent of the population attending college had grown and digital dependency has eroded social skills, colleges outside the elites have had to work harder to retain students and move them along to graduation in a timely way. All sorts of new studies trying to define the practices that allow all students to succeed.
I’m married to a professor who has done extensive research on years of grades in his class. He has crunched statistics on course grades based on attendance, homework grades, quiz grades, exam grades, and participation. He has found that missing above a certain number of class sessions has a high correlation with failing the class - so he has a written attendance policy in his syllabus that he adheres to.
There are some classes where you don’t need to show up and can still pass the class. There are others, like my husband’s, where the class material expands upon what is in the book, so you are not likely to pass if you consistently miss classes.
Some professors don’t care if students show up - and also don’t care if students pass. Others will fail students who miss beyond a certain number of classes.
Best thing to do is go to class. Second to that would be check to see if there is a written attendance policy for the class, the department, or the school. Third is keep skipping and take the chance - it’s really win some, lose some.
Non-elite college graduation rates were probably lower before compared to now, particularly when state universities (just after the great expansion of such) had enough capacity to admit almost anyone with the bare minimum high school academic preparation, preferring to “give everyone a chance and let them decide whether to make use of it”.