Attending class is naturally associated with doing well in class. However, to improve attendance rates, students should be motivated to show up, rather than have attendance be mandatory.

Currently, attendance is not mandatory across NIU as a whole. Nichole Knutson, associate vice provost for student success, said attendance policies vary from class to class. 

“There’s autonomy within each classroom, so each faculty member is able to create their own syllabus,” Knutson said.

Mandatory attendance has some potential benefits, such as helping students save money, specifically those who don’t want to show up to class. If a student enrolls in a class, later decides they don’t want to attend it that semester and then forgets to unenroll, they could end up wasting money on an education they never received. Mandatory attendance would help instructors notice this kind of costly mistake and remind those students to drop the class in case they forget.

Reminding students to drop classes they don’t want also prevents class capacity being wasted. There are only so many seats for each class each semester, so it is wasteful if a student enrolls in a class, chooses not to attend it and forgets to drop it while someone else might want or need to attend the class but was too late to enroll.

Though these are appealing benefits, the main idea behind mandatory attendance is that it will improve students’ grades. 

However, mandatory attendance doesn’t automatically mean better grades. 

“Studies that have required mandatory attendance in classes have not shown that students do any better with mandatory attendance policies,” Knutson said. “If students don’t want to come to class and don’t want to engage, they’re not going to engage. So they may come and sit in the back of a classroom, you know, now it’s playing on your smartphone, before it may have been doing a crossword puzzle or whatever.” 

Instead, the solution should be fostering an environment to make students interested in attending class to learn, rather than to daydream. Having students write down their reasons for attending a class, or what they find interesting about the class and holding onto those notes throughout the semester might help them find ways to encourage students to attend. Workshops or other events can be held and advertised so demotivated students can receive encouragement to continue their studies.

College is often stressful; if students don’t have the will to learn, they will just go through the motions until the semester ends. Mandatory classes won’t change that.