Attendance Appeal

The money students invest in Temple should motivate them to attend class.

In-state undergraduates in the College of Liberal Arts pay approximately $11,834 a year for tuition. Out-of-state students pay approximately $21,662 under the same school. Not only does this exclude the university services fee, but depending on the college, school or concentration, the price can exceed more than $15,000 for in-state undergraduates alone.

For that amount of money, we should want to go to class. Yet, when we roll over to realize a professor has canceled an 8 a.m. class, it’s easy to gleefully fall back into a slumber. Likewise, when some students realize a lecture is no more than the PowerPoint presentations the professor posts on Blackboard, attendance dwindles.

In 2008, the auditor general reported the university spent $235,943,580 on instruction, meaning a large portion of students’ expenses are going toward whomever is lecturing.

This week in The Temple News, Sean Carlin reports that though there is no university-wide truancy policy, schools and colleges do have general policies [“Faculty explain teacher truancy,” Page 1] that enforce professors to hold class.

Although the College of Liberal Arts requires professors create a plan to make up missed classes, monitoring such incidents is a cumbersome process and instructors who do cancel class probably follow the policy loosely.

If you’re a student who wants more bang for your buck, start to hold instructors accountable for not only holding class, but for teaching in that class, as well. It’s not a matter of filing complaints to deans or department chairs when a professor cancels classes. It’s a matter of letting your instructor know you want to learn.

If a professor is not consistently holding class, send an e-mail to him or her as a gentle reminder that you’re paying for them to inform you.

While The Temple News agrees with freshman business major Charles Paraboschi regarding instances when the weather is a factor for professors’ decisions to cancel classes, we press professors to hold true to their duties.

These duties do not just include showing up. Professors who offer nothing more than paraphrased notes from textbooks need to remember they’re present to offer a more personal explanation, and students should be ready to receive it.

Instructors are not nagging parents forcing their children to go to school, and as adults paying for a service, students shouldn’t need to be coaxed into attending class.