What is the real cost of skipping seminars?

Amid the golden memories and intellectual enlightenment of the end of another academic year lurks one slightly sheepish question: how guilty should we feel about the amount of classes we have skipped this year? One hardly needs to consult official statistics to be aware that most students have been guilty of skipping classes — on a weekly basis in some cases.

Given the bustling nature of university life, and simply knowing what students are like (What can we say? We do love a good lie-in), this doesn’t really come as a surprise. However, it’s likely to raise a few eyebrows when we consider how much these degrees are costing us. A university degree is a highly valued asset, and rightly so. And yet, in spite of this — and the raising of caps on tuition fees, of course — most of us have still missed at least a couple of lectures in our time.

So should we feel obligated to attend every single class to which we are assigned?

True, our fees cover a variety of diversions beyond the courses themselves, but primarily, we enrol to continue our intellectual pursuits, and at no small financial cost. So should we feel obligated to attend every single class to which we are assigned? There is fierce debate regarding the notion that attendance should be made compulsory. University of Sussex alumnus and Guardian contributor Joshua Feldman has expressed his own opinion on why such a measure should be imposed in British universities, and the comment thread of his article demonstrates how hotly contested the issue is. One reader has posited that “making lectures compulsory infantalises students and discourages active learning”, while another argues that to skip classes is to squander the opportunities coveted by unsuccessful university applicants.

However, in his own article for The Jakarta Post, Taufik R. Indrakesuma highlights that at- tendance requirements disengage students by making their own choices appear limited, and rendering higher education as a non-negotiable process. Indrakesuma cites the University of Indonesia’s attendance policy as an unfavourable example, wherein students are required to attend 80 percent of classes in order to be eligible for examinations.

He claims that matters are not this simple: there is no dependable correlation between an individual student’s attendance and their final grade, since merely attending a class does not guarantee a student’s ability to withhold or deploy the information provided.

On the cusp of graduation myself, I agree with his argument that it should not be one size fits all mentality. The choice over whether or not to attend should be left to the individual. Those of us for whom attendance is not compulsory should consider ourselves fortunate to be granted a little extra influence over how our learning is organised.

As long as we are able to demonstrate our knowledge and expertise when it is required, surely it is excusable to miss one or two sessions, especially if we feel that there are more beneficial ways in which to use our time. Where this does become a problem, however, is when cutting classes becomes less about making pragmatic choices, and more about apathy. Student absence is not always indicative of disillusionment with a particular course or module, but there are instances in which this is the case, which is an issue which needs to be addressed.

there is no dependable correlation between an individual student’s attendance and their final grade

Nevertheless, university is a site for discovery, and therefore, wherever possible, the responsibility should lie with the individual when it comes to making choices regarding the organisation of time, including the attendance or non-attendance of classes. It is when reasons for absence are grounded in apathy or laziness that the issue requires investigation, and perhaps the focus should shift from preventing absences altogether to scrutinising the conditions of those absences at a more focused level.

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