[warning: upon reading this, you may feel that I sound like an arrogant, judgmental, and ungrateful student for calling some lecturers boring. Believe me when I say that this article was written not for lecturer-bashing, but just as a form of expression, and also for the sake of getting what I believe to be a good idea across.]
When the only thing keeping students attending a certain class, taught by certain boring lecturers, is mandatory attendance, and when this mandatory attendance requirement causes students to miss out on other things which are more important in their agenda, it is clear that there's something amiss.
A student's incentive to enter a classroom, sit for 2 hours or so, and listen to the guy talking in the front of the classroom, is that he/she will gain some form of utility from the amount of time spent. Whether this utility be in the form of gaining knowledge, getting a good grade, or even entertainment (the lecturer might be a really interesting guy), this is what students actively seek out in their attendance of class.
However, it must be kept in mind that students, like other rational actors, want to do a number of other things as well, but they only have a limited set of time. In other words, there are trade offs to be faced, and there is an opportunity cost to attending any particular class. There might be assignments for other classes that are due, he might be really hungry and just happened to miss his lunch hour due to other trade offs, or he might also be slightly sleep-deprived and drowsy.
Thus, when it comes to that, students will, like other rational actors, attempt to maximize their utility within those time constraints. If the class isn't all that interesting, they may simply choose not to attend, with full knowledge of the risks and consequences.
It also logically follows that, all other factors set equal, students who do not attend classes regularly will experience more difficulty with exams than those who do, because the students who do not attend classes are more likely to have missed crucial information which would have been given during class.
Thus, given that university students (especially economics students who are familiar with the concept) will be able to make rational decisions, and that absence from classes in itself already acts as an impediment towards getting good grades, why are mandatory attendance requirements still being enforced?
The only argument for mandatory attendance is that students are innately lazy, thus making them view attending classes as a disutility and also making them always choose any other alternative over attending class, if given the freedom to choose. However, this would be quite a ridiculous assumption to make about people who have entered their adulthood. Although this assumption would be correct with primary schoolchildren, whose young minds yearn for recess (or better yet, the dismissal bell) at all times, it would not apply to adults who make an informed decision in attending college.
Even if certain classes were regarded as a disutility, most of the time it's not (just) because of the students' laziness, but (also) because of the uninteresting, boring, tedious, and/or sleep-inducing teaching style of the lecturer. By definition, a lecturer's main purpose would be to educate and pass on information. This not only means telling the information to the students, but also making sure that this information is received, digested, and comprehended. Teachers who end up coming across as boring and uninteresting, in other words, are not teaching very well. This is a problem that exists, and it is a problem which needs to be addressed. Proof of this is evident from the class registration patterns in UI's new system, where students can choose their lecturers. Lecturers with a reputation of boring people to death will generally get very little numbers of students registering, and even the few who do sign up usually do it because they need to take the course and were beaten to all the "good classes".
However, mandatory attendance requirements make it so that no matter what the quality of the lecturer, classes must still be attended no matter what. Thus, this removes the incentive for improvement in teaching skills and teaching styles.
In the end, mandatory attendance requirements, like all other acts of government intervention on a well-functioning market, will result in an inefficient equilibrium. Students will no longer experience full independence in decision-making, and thus will not be able to maximize their utility. In addition, lecturers whose classes are not very interesting will be "protected", meaning that there will no longer be an incentive for lecturers to improve their teaching styles in order to attract students. At the same time, it does not reward lecturers who do make the effort to be interesting and to teach well, because it would not show in the class attendance. Thus, it would not be wise to continue this policy.
What better solution for the sake of education than letting adults be adults and telling people who are bad at what they do that they need to get better?
Monday, March 10, 2008
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14 comments:
Fik, since my first classes in campus, I have not been able to find some (which, as for me, means more than 3) entertaining lecture
If I happened to count lecturers fulfilling requirements you stated. And that condition really irritated me since I happened to attend a class taught by a really boring Ph.D lecturer (how come?!).
Unfortunately,the class was my
concentration. I got no added value.
I don't think the policy requiring students to attend those mandatory lectures is to be defended any more, in the end.
Do UI students fill out a teaching evaluation form at the end of each semester? At my school, I know of at least one lecturer who has been fired due to bad evaluation results.
Plus, there is no mandatory attendance.
Having said that, there are still horrible lecturers at my school. So, as long as they're the minority, UI should be fine.
The problem is they are the majority :(
I don't like sitting and wasting my time for 2 and half hours listen to "textbook" or "slides show".
Its really really damn boring.
I hope UI can improve its teaching style which is better than only "textbook" or "slides show" teaching style.
One more thing, for me, the mandatory attendance is simply sucks.
Great analysis Fik !!! :)
I believe that our beloved lecturers DO understand how inefficient it is to interfere the mechanism by mandatory attendance.
I aggree that we should let adults -meaning both the students and the lecturers as well- to decide rationally as adults.
The problem is: Given that the lecturers do understand that mandatory attendance is not an effective tools of improving academic quality, why do they still defend it anyway?
So, maybe the lecturers have been the main problem persist [harshly, if you can't improve the teaching quality, at least you can improve it quantitatively, hehhe].
Anyway, teaching needs skill. Some people are just not that expertise in explaining things or concepts verbally eventhough they are extremely clever.
And about the boredom of lecturers, mmm.. i think classes in our faculty are not designed as an entertainment either. I think you are all also familiar that this is one of the variables which differentiates state-schools and private schools.
@mandcrut: I do believe that, in the case of mandatory classes, as the number of students in the classes are usually low, it means that our evaluation results do work better in terms of highlighting lecture incompetence (I really couldn't find a better word, sorry). Although it does nothing to help us, at least our juniors will hopefully have a better experience.
@daniel: We do fill out teaching evaluations, but they're long, and we have to fill out the evals for all of our classes and lecturers at once. It becomes a tedious chore, which not many students take seriously. Thus, usually they just speed through it by giving all 3s (scale of 1-4). So, when I gave a horrible lecturer 1s and 2s in almost everything (gave him 3 for syllabus coherence and consistency, but that was all), it didn't have much of an impact, and next semester he taught another mandatory class which I am currently attending.
@lionel: improvement in teaching styles is definitely something which I believe the university should attempt to facilitate.
@kiki: I didn't mean entertainment in the sense that all teachers need to be comedians, but entertainment in the sense that teachers need to be passionate, and need to be able to get their students really intrigued by the material. They also need to make the atmosphere of the class very discussion-friendly, as well as making their teaching material as a stimulus to ask questions, so that actual education and scientific discussion can take place within the classrooms.
Good analysis on why I don't really care about class attendance.
But the student need to do their part as well by assessing the lecturer accordingly.
Let the market for exciting classes flourish!
the mandatory attendance policy would work in an ideal world, where all lecturers add value (they might be interesting, they might not). psychology and neuroscience find that uni students -- with their raging hormones and still developing inhibition system -- often don't know what's best for their future selves. anecdotal evidence along the lines of "i wish i had studied harder while in uni" abound.
Well, I guess, to some extent, that's true. But to what extent? How impaired is the average uni student's (with an average age of about 20)capacity to make future-oriented decisions, compared to university graduates over the age of, say, 25? I'd like to think of myself as someone who is fully capable of making decisions on whether I should attend class, not based on spur-of-the-moment laziness but based on whether or not I think I'll gain something from it. Secondly, studying hard and attending class are not that strongly correlated. Class attendance does not guarantee understanding, nor does understanding necessarily require regular class attendance.
It seems like a very "lowest-common-denominator" approach to assume that all uni students are incapable of making decisions. It also implies that the institution knows better than the individual regarding the needs of the individual, which is also quite untrue.
Besides, the students who don't study hard enough (in whatever way they choose) will most likely fail, which is already a disincentive in itself. So, there are incentive-based mechanisms already in place in universities without having to resort to mandatory attendance.
i see that you're not sympathetic to any kind of paternalistic policy at all. while i agree that uni is the place where young minds should be free to be responsible for their own actions and decisions, i'm a believer that in certain circumstances, other souls are in a position to make better decisions for us.
now i should stress that as far as our education institutions are concerned, i also disagree with the mandatory attendance policy. my previous point was that in an ideal institution, such policy would be defensible on the psychological ground i mentioned before.
indeed, there are differences between the brain of an average 20-year-old with that of an average 25-year-old, particularly when it comes to calculating risk and satisfying immediate pleasures. maybe you can realise it yourself in a few years time.
but surely there are individual exceptions, and you of all people might be one :-)
This is my favorite article yet, Fik.
To comment, I just wish to emphasize--as you implied yourself in the article--that your argument hinges on the premise that students, at least a majority of them, are rational actors who are able to appropriately calculate tradeoffs. Whether this premise holds true remains to be determined.
Irrationality to make decision on the students' part does not need to stem from "innate laziness" (I love the terms you coin), but can simply come from the inability to see the causality between attending classes and accruing information. This is even more likely when we consider that the incentives involved (good grades, high GPA, good job, wealth, showing off your success to your high school buliies) are significantly delayed.
But be it as it may, if the students bear the entire cost of their action, then yes all of your arguments against mandatory attendance stand. The thing is, they don't. Externalities are incurred. For students of private universities, their parents bear most--if not all--the cost of their actions. For students of subsidised institutions, like UI, the externatlities are incurred on the larger population: the Indonesian people; the taxpayers; me!
Now as we know, even the most liberal economists agree that government intervention on the market is justifiable if the market is not efficient to begin with (as I can see you're very much for carbon scheme). So in that light, mandatory attendance may have some justification after all.
Read my take on this topic here
Read it, and even commented on it. I have to admit, the proposal would be quite tough on students, but it seems a lot better than the status quo.
Been there, done that.
The more you learn the less you get, the less you learn and you'll pass
«that absence from classes in itself already acts as an impediment towards getting good grades»
not necessarily; ie. fulltime module delivered online.
Attendance isn't compulsory in Australian university. Perhaps its northern neighbour, notably with a different history and culture, remains rather keen in its militaristic traits: everything is a must, you do this do that or else...
boh
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