The University of Memphis has no school-wide attendance policy, and some people think it’s about time to ask why.
“It might be a good idea to standardize attendance policies to a certain degree,” English department chair Stephen Tabachnick said.
“There isn’t a set school-wide policy now because classes differ so much in subject matter and the way they are run,” Assistant Dean of Undergraduate Studies for the College of Arts and Sciences William Thompson said.
Currently, attendance policies are left mostly up to the individual departments. However, some of the departments allow the professors to create their own policies.
“I have one instructor in a general education class who doesn’t allow for any absences. He actually subtracts a set number of points from our total grade for each class that we miss,” junior Jennifer Persechini said.
According to Ernest Rakow, assistant dean of administration for the College of Education, professors can take attendance into account when calculating students’ grades.
“As long as the professors put their policies in the syllabus and announce it the first day of class, they’re not violating any rules,” he said.
There have not been any real problems or complaints from students about attendance, according to both Tabachnick and Rakow.
“The only way officials know that professors violate this rule is if students complain,” Rakow said. “If this happened, corrective action would be taken.”
The problem that professors run into with attendance is deciding which excuses for being absent are credible and which are not, according to Tabachnick.
“The English department has policies for its lower division classes, allowing 6 absences,” Tabachnick said. “This policy is in place so professors don’t have to decide what’s a believable excuse.”
Like the ones in the English department, most classes with a set policy for attendance are general education classes, according to Thompson.
“There is some rationale to standardizing attendance for these classes,” Thompson said. “But ultimately students should have the maturity to decide whether or not they need to be in class. That’s the big difference between high school and college.”
