Determinants of Student Absence From College Lectures

Introduction and Rationale

With college and university enrollment on the rise across the world, and the cost of each academic session increasing steadily, it is critical for modern society to examine the behaviors of college and university culture — particularly as they relate to class attendance. As more students navigate highly competitive enrollment processes, as secondary schools reshape their curricula around the foundations required by higher education, and as institutions continually expand their physical infrastructure, it becomes important to acknowledge the widespread trend of skipping lectures and to understand the reasoning behind it.

Because of the importance, expense, and vast populations enrolled in universities, it is a critical social issue to analyze why students might choose to be absent from lectures. A careful analysis of student choice will reveal the social pressures, tight schedules, and academic flux that influence a student's decision to miss class. In examining these issues, the academic community can learn from the factors affecting students — whether genuine hardship or poor decision-making — that not only undermine the instructor's role and the structure of standard academia, but also diminish the student's ability to make the most of the academic experience.

There is a popularized degree of "coolness" attributed to skipping class in the broader culture, emblematic in recent literature such as I Am Charlotte Simmons and films like Road Trip and Ferris Bueller's Day Off. Yet the rising cost of education would seemingly discourage students from indulging in this fantasized skipping-class culture. Popular culture suggests that if a student can miss class without being caught, he or she attains a new social status — as someone who has outwitted the system. Likewise, if a student can miss lectures and still earn high marks, it implies that his or her intelligence far exceeds what the course demands. In both cases, a form of status elevation is associated with class absence under certain circumstances.

If a student is not missing class to prove latent adolescent self-worth, it is important to analyze the other reasons for absence. Two of these may be self-defeating aspects of the modern university system itself. With classes so expensive, a student might be pressured to finish in less than the standard time, overloading his or her schedule; alternatively, a student might hold a job outside of school to keep tuition paid and maintain enrollment. In both cases, the system creates hardship: a shifting work schedule may cause infrequent or even regular absences, while an overloaded academic schedule may leave a student so overwhelmed that skipping one class becomes the only way to complete work required by another.

Some students may, however, choose to miss class simply because they have not managed their free time well and must skip a lecture to finish an assignment. Others may miss class for extracurricular or personal reasons — visiting friends or family, traveling, or shopping. Some students report missing lectures merely because they find the content unstimulating. While none of these are admirable reasons, many students miss lectures for exactly these causes.

The objective of this research is to determine the causes of student absence from lectures. Research will consist of interviews with students, teachers, teaching assistants, administrators, and school counselors, supplemented by a series of surveys. The findings are intended to inform the construction of systems that encourage lecture attendance, rather than perpetuate environments in which students routinely miss the classes for which they are paying, enrolled, and receiving credit. As the National Center for Education Statistics has documented, retention and completion rates are closely linked to student engagement — making attendance a measurable institutional concern.