The college life in India is considered as an extension of school life, not by students themselves, but by elders, including parents and teachers. One of the ways in which this manifests itself is the attendance policy in Indian universities. A large number of universities would insist that attendance be marked of every student coming to a class in every class of every course, including labs and tutorials. There is a certain minimum requirement of attendance, mostly 75 percent.
If a student attends less classes than that, there is a severe consequence, usually not allowed to take the final exam and given a fail grade in the course. In many universities, a fail grade would amount to a student being marked as a "backlogger" and no company coming for placement would touch him by a 10 feet pole. So the student not only has to repeat the course, which sometimes may mean spending a semester extra in the system, paying extra tuition, delaying earnings from a job, but it may also mean that there is no job through campus placement. Basically, the punishment for missing a few boring classes is very harsh with no consequence whatsoever to the teacher who delivered those boring lectures. After all, all teachers hired through proper selection procedures must be assumed to be great, and all students missing a class must be bad students.
Over the last 25 years of my academic career, I have had discussions on attendance in several forums and with a large number of colleagues in different institutes, and frankly, I still haven't figured out the genesis of capital punishment for missing classes. Here are the reasons that I have heard so far.
If students attend classes. they learn better. Let us assume this to be true. Well, if they don't attend and consequently don't learn, shouldn't the grades or marks reflect their learning. As a teacher, I want my students to learn, and if they don't attend my class and are not performing well, I can counsel them, and if they still don't learn, I must assign them the grade that reflects their learning. How many faculty members would take the pains of counseling students. How many faculty members would give a Fail grade to someone who has not learnt. If you don't want to do either of these two things, then forcing attendance is not for helping students, but for helping yourself.
Also note that many faculty members will also argue that if someone
was ill, or if someone had a family member die during the semester or had other "genuine reasons",
then we could be lenient with them. These people are not realizing (or perhaps they are realizing and still believe that it is the right thing to do) that they are asking for grades to be based on sympathy or "genuine reasons" and not academic learning. Consider two students. Both have attended 70% classes. Both have identical marks in all exams, quizzes, projects, etc. One had his father die during the semester and submits death certificate. The other had his father ill and submits medical certificates of his father. What would we do. We can't question the death certificate. (I am deliberately taking the most extreme reason to make a point.) But all medical certificates, particularly from a private doctor, are assumed to be fake. So, one students is barred from taking the final exam and is awarded a Fail grade. The other student is allowed to take the final exam, and passes the course. What have we done. Between two identical students, we have given fail grade to one, and pass grade to the other, simply because we had sympathy with one and not the other.
There are aspects of learning that happens by attending classes which cannot be evaluated. This could be true for some courses and may not be true for all courses. Can we have attendance requirements in some courses and not the others. And even in courses where some learning happens in classroom which cannot be evaluated, may be such learning can be quantified in terms of fraction of the grade. So just like we have in our mind various learning outcomes and we evaluate learning of those learning outcomes through exams, quizzes, projects, presentations, assignments, and so on, and assign some weight to learning of each of those outcomes, we could similarly assign some weight to learning of those outcomes which cannot be evaluated through traditional means. So if that weight is 10% or 20%, then absence can be penalized in proportion of those weights. Why award a capital punishment when a small deduction of marks will take care of matching learning and grades.
What is very interesting is that lately the regulatory bodies are almost forcing the universities to give students credit for online courses offered through Swayam portal. In such courses, the student studies online from wherever s/he wants, whenever s/he wants. That is, there are no classes. In some instances, there may be some discussion sessions at best. So one can learn well without attending a single class in 20% of the courses. But in the other 80% of the courses, one can only learn if one attends at least 75% of the classes. At the very least, this is an acceptance of the principle that in some courses, attendance is not required for learning. Once we accept this, shouldn't we then consider each course carefully to decide whether attendance is necessary for learning in that course.
There are non-academic learning which are important for careers. For example, you learn to discuss, communicate, dress up, pay respect to your elders (teachers) and what not. Let us assume that all these are indeed important for career growth, and we want to encourage them to learn these during their college days. Why not just put a small monetary fine. Students from poorer background will find it difficult to bunk classes. And rich kids, you don't have to worry about their careers. Their rich parents will take care of that. Let them pay fine and get away with it. May be the fine can be exponentially increasing with every course in which there is lack of attendance.
It is the discipline, stupid! The most commonly heard complaint is that if attendance is not forced then campus romance will flourish. After all, what will they do with all the free time. And that is somehow bad. And that, of course, will rise to indiscipline. Empty mind is devil's workshop or something like that. Again, let us assume that this is a genuine concern. But can we avoid this indiscipline by having a smaller penalty. Should capital punishment be the only penalty for missing some classes (and causing indiscipline in campus).
I hope someone can come up with a rational argument in favor of compulsory attendance, one which explains why online courses are fine, why missing classes due to some reasons is fine, and why a smaller punishment than failing the course and barring the student from campus placement will not work.
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Mr. M. K. Gandhi and Nathuram Godse
4 weeks ago
13 comments:
Nice blog.It is age old practice where teaching was 'Noble' and its an insult to teachers if any one misses classes.Today teaching is like any other job based on your interest. Why force students to skip classes. It is frustrating for the teaching community. Time to see how they can add value to the institution and students rather than still staying in gurukul age. For professional colleges, teaching should be secondary job and primary job should be research. Remove the concept of text books. If you spend 1 hr in the class, students must spend 3 hrs. Again no compulsion. Accept that there will always be some students who are smarter, intelligent than you( the teacher). Utilize their potential. Identify such students( it's an art), get something concrete out of them, not just 9.98cgpa. Teachers need change in mindset. All regulations in this (attendence) must go. Teachers can always give surprise test if you really want to hold on to students in the class....Spend time in research. Lots of work can be done. Don't tie students...
Superb blog Sir.
I remember my coaching days when I felt sad on missing any of my class. I reached coaching 10 minutes earlier so that I don't miss out anything. The way of teaching was superb in coaching and they tickled our intellect time and time again. Shouldn't the teacher put on more efforts to make class more interesting and connected rather than binding students to attend them? If anything as boring as inorganic chemistry can make my mind bamboozled on adding a creative touch by a coaching teacher then I think any subject can?
First of all I want to thank sir for picking up this issue of compulsory attendance at Indian universities. As the time changes, the urge for quality education also increases. Quality education does not only mean that providing best faculty, but also best facilities for encouraging college students to take up higher education. This thing will only happen if college not only focuses on getting the best teachers, professors into College but also getting best out of the students. I personally don't think College is able to provide what students want. As we know that every person has different strengths and weaknesses, so why forcing all students to go through all courses provided in the College curriculum. According to me, the reason behind the every student bunking classes is due to lack of interest in the particular course. Sometimes it isn't the fault of the particular professor that is not able to create interest in the students or maybe a particular student(who didn't have an interest in that particular course). So my point of view is that why not create choices among the students to take up any course in which the student has an interest. For example in semester-1, for a particular branch, student has to take 6 courses and if student is given choice to select 6 courses out of (let say) 10 courses (considering compulsory ones and additional ones). This will create an positive atmosphere where they'll actually have the choice to select the courses in which they are interested. This will also encourage students to gain mastery in their interested type of courses. This will enhance higher studies and research atmosphere in the College. Because I believe that there are 2 types of students in the College, 1st one are those who know what their interests are and would choose their courses accordingly and 2nd ones are those who are in search of their interests and would be able to choose different courses to ultimately find that passionate interest. Because at the end,the difference between school and college is to have freedom to take up their courses on their own interests. Actually it isn't about the job, it is about finding the hidden talent that everybody has but has been lost somewhere during school days and then preparing for entrance exams ie. iits nits. So I'll hope this idea if executed, can make a difference in the lives of students as well as in the ranking of the college.
Nice article Dheeraj, good to see you back at this :-)
I agree with you that we should let go of minimum attendance rules. Heck, Prof. Indiresan did this for us when I was a student, but once he left, we went back to our good old ways.
Following your line, let us not forget NPTEL courses (and other such MOOCs) that are available as web courses and video lectures - if a student can learn from those and clear our exams, why insist they sit in class and get bored by us? Yes, it hurts our ego (and may even create an existential crisis) that the student can do well without our inputs. There is one point I have not been able to beat back. There is a segment (may be 10% of the population) that is indifferent to attending class, but if made to attend lectures regularly, benefits and does better in the course. Mandatory attendance helps this segment. Yes, but at what cost? We had a lengthly discussion recently in the IITM senate on doing away with attendance requirements, but the segment of colleagues subscribing to my point above would not back off and in the end, we had to leave it at status quo - minimum attendance 85% :-(
@Sriram, there are two points I am making. One is that attendance should not be compulsory as an Institute policy. (I have no problems with individual instructors deciding that attendance is required in the course they are teaching.) Two, if the attendance is indeed compulsory, then the penalty for not meeting the requirement should not be very harsh. So, as long as, IITM has low cost of missing classes, it becomes a less important issue.
At PEC, we recently reached a compromise to change the rule from failing the student and barring him/her from placement to half grade reduction (1 point on a 10-point scale). We believe that if the attendance is important for students to learn, a half grade reduction is sufficient penalty to "force" him/her to come to the class. Of course, some people will still not come to the classes (even today, with capital punishment, many students don't show up for classes), that should be ok.
To come to the specific argument about attendance helping 10% of the students, I would have the following questions: Is there a data to back it up. Many of our institutions have been recording attendance for years. Can we, for example, look at the data of similar academic background students (similar CGPA before the class) and see whether there is correlation between attendance and performance. Even though correlation does not imply causation, we can still accept this. Whenever, I have asked this question, the reply has been that such a research is not possible since attendance cannot be trusted. There is proxy attendance. There are students who would come for the first five minutes or the last five minutes of the class and mark attendance. There are instructors who would mark a student present even when the student is absent because the student is ill or there are other circumstances. So, we can't learn anything from the data, but we can still claim whatever we want to claim from the data, and we can still give capital punishment based on data that we ourselves won't trust.
Second line of argument which is more akin to whataboutery and hence not so attractive to me is are faculty members doing other things that 10% students may benefit from, or even 90% students may benefit from. In IITK, I can tell you that most students would prefer a 10PM class over an 08AM class. Are we agreeable to that. Are faculty members willing to seriously indulge in continuous evaluation - it is vanishing at a rapid pace with the argument that TA support for grading is poor. That would help a whole lot of students. Are we willing to identify the bottom 10-20% of students, and offer extra classes for them. Today, most young faculty would tell me that their focus is exclusively research and teaching is a burden and hence they will not go to any extra length for helping students. So, if you are not willing to help students, why attendance is compulsory based on an argument that this helps students.
Lastly, shouldn't we study if the poor attendance is due to poor quality of teaching. Let us assume that most of our teachers are great and students are the culprits, they lack motivation and what not. But is it anyone's argument that no faculty member is poor at teaching. If you are going to give capital punishment to students for not attending those boring lectures, shouldn't there be some penalty for delivering those boring lectures. Can we say that teaching quality (don't know how we will measure this) would be an important criteria for promotions. Can we say that teaching feedback will be made public. After all, if you are punishing a student for missing those classes, at least let the world know what did the students think of those classes.
And why is it that faculty members insist that I take attendance. Why can't we have a policy that everyone decides. You think attendance is important in your course, take attendance. What do you know of my teaching style and my course to force me to take attendance.
@Gurveen Saini, you are probably from PEC. We have abolished 'N' grade from the next semester.
This is such a well addressed research topic that anyone who talks for and against without looking up the research results of controlled experiments is doing no less than the wheel’s reinvention. The blog and the accompanying comments bothers me quite a bit, that we (professors) advice our phd students to conduct thorough literature survey before claiming one’s results but we seldom look up for one before getting opinionated. From Barack Obama to the top Ivy leagues, there has been interesting discussions and deliberations on this topic. One may want to do a simple google search before taking sides :)
@Sudarshan, I can't say about the comments, but I did try to search for any research on what is an appropriate penalty for not attending classes, and I couldn't find any. I tried searching for them again today after your comment, and I still didn't find any. If you have googled and found some good articles, may I request you to share them.
The references from this: “Class Attendance in College: A Meta-Analytic Review of the Relationship of Class Attendance With Grades and Student Characteristics”. And branch out. Some of the references are research classics.
@Sudarshan, Thanks for sharing. I have read the paper. But, I am afraid, this has very little to do with my blog. In my blog, I am saying that let us assume all arguments in favor of attendance are true (in particular, that attendance leads to better academic performance). What I am questioning is whether the attendance needs to be mandated through a capital punishment (F grade with no placement/internship allowed) or a jail term (a grade reduction). And I am concluding that a jail term will suffice.
If we look at the paper you have suggested, it shows (and they agree that they have very limited data) that mandatory attendance improves grades only slightly (while there is a strong correlation between voluntary attendance and academic performance). The paper itself says that mandatory attendance policy is not about whether there is improvement in academic performance or not, but about the philosophy of education, and it is perfectly fine for a university to argue that even if there is an improvement in academic performance, it is not a good enough reason for curbing the choices of an adult learner. And therefore, it is ok to write such a blog without knowing the research behind attendance :-)
Also, the paper points out that the improved performance may not be a result of better understanding and learning, but simply a result of better understanding of what is expected in a project, in an assignment, what is expected as answers in an exam, what kind of tests are likely to happen and so on. This needs to be researched further. Now, if indeed it turns out that improved performance is not due to better learning but better understanding of measurement of performance, then should it not be upto the student to decide whether to attend a class or not.
The paper also finds that the performance improves more in science subjects than non-science subjects and the authors suggest that it could be due to faculty members using demonstration as pedagogy. Could we not consider that attendance be required in some courses (where pedagogy is such that attendance will lead to a much better learning) and not mandatory in others.
And lastly, when I asked you for a paper, I almost knew that it would be based on some study done more than a decade ago in a different culture. Who does research in such things in India. A decade is a long time, and remember that even this paper is based on studies published in the previous several decades, including some in the 1970s. In 2000s, you wouldn't see anyone in the class with a smartphone. Today, you will. So mandatory attendance in that era could potentially lead to someone actually listening to the instructor. Today, does that happen, particularly in our universities and Tier 2/3 institutions. Given the quality of our faculty in most of such institutions, will attendance lead to better grades (except where the instructor will decide the exams and hence can ask questions hinted during the class).
So frankly, after reading this paper, I am even more convinced than ever before that there should not be mandatory attendance as a rule for all courses in a university in India. However, the blog is not about attendance being mandatory, but assuming that the attendance will be mandatory, whether the penalty should be failure with no job/internship or a lighter one like a grade reduction.
Dear Sir,
I have always found your blogs enlightening. I think mandatory attendance is part of the implicit contract between an institution and parents (not the students) that the institution will place the students after completion of course requirements, including mandatory attendance. As the psychological contract is not with the students but with their parents,their consent does not matter.
Regards,
Sanket
Where I teach, there is zero penalty for skipping classes or dropping courses any time --- the joke is that there is a course-drop booth for early birds outside the convocation hall. So this is the ideal world Dheeraj supports.
Just after the course drop deadline (which means nothing, because courses can be dropped even after death) a graduate elective may begin with 60 students enrolled. There are perfectly decent-quality instructors whose classes are attended by 15--30 students. The first quiz is written by, say, 55 students. The other 5 haven't yet dropped the course because, you get it. After the first quiz, attendance drops to 10--20. But 45 students write the second quiz or midterm. By now may be 5 have officially dropped the course. After the second quiz, attendance drops to 10--15. 40 students write the final exam, but only 10 have dropped the course. 25 students pass, and the rest drop the course some time between grades are published to retirement. Throughout, a classroom with 80 seats are allocated to the course, and TAs have to evaluate exams of at least 40 students.
An instructor may make attendance "compulsory" with prior intimation to students. If a student fails to clear the attendance threshold, s/he gets a grade called "DX" (no relation to car trim levels) which can be converted to zero implication on the grade sheet, CPI, or job prospects. It's as if the DX never happened.
Placement statistics are the envy of all Indian colleges. Our alumni lead global multinational corporations. Our recruiters do not depend on the grades we assign. They have their own exams and interviews which significantly damage our academic and research programs. During 2--3 months every year, students are writing 2--3 quizzes every evening. One student may have to write 10--20 such exams in a month. But this again proves that attendance does not matter for anything that really matters.
I find no problem and no loss of face that we are more of an admission exam and skill certification agency than a real college or university. In fact, so many excellent courses and lectures are already available online that it is a drag to waste our time, which is much better spent in other pursuits, in preparing lectures and even exams. And in any case the stuff we teach is overkill for the pakoda frying industry.
The remaining real talent in India is likely already bypassing JEE (and failing that, GATE) and skipping town just after high school, if not earlier.
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