One to unlimited. That’s the range of absences I’m allowed in my classes before it affects my grade. In my class with the most extreme attendance policy, one excused absence is permitted, and every subsequent absence results in a grade drop by a third of a letter, meaning one absence — excused or not — could take you from an A- to a B+. My classes with the most lenient attendance policies don’t take attendance at all, so there is no number of absences you could accrue that would directly lower your grade.

This is an experience echoed by many of my peers. Every day, we juggle half a dozen attendance policies in our minds, trying to remember if we should sprint to get to our class on time or if we aren’t penalized for tardies. While I trust professors to make their own decisions on grading policies for their courses, I feel that these discrepancies from course to course can have a number of unexpected side effects.

For one, it’s confusing. As university students, we already have a lot on our plates and trying to discern wildly different attendance policies feels like a waste of our brain power. It would be simpler to standardize.

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Second, overly lenient attendance policies only work fairly if class materials cannot be accessed without attending the class. Classes in which students are tested on material communicated by the professor but not written on any slides or published notes tend to incentivize attendance, as students generally want the information they need to succeed on assessments and will go to class if that is the only way to get it. 

In this vein, one of my professors does not take attendance, and a significant portion of the class period is spent working on a weekly graded assignment. If you go to class, you will essentially be guided through the assignment in a way that guarantees a 100, but if you do not attend, you’ll have to spend some time figuring it out on your own. If you are sick, however, and send the professor a record of your illness, he’ll send you a recording of the lecture. 

This system is almost perfect, save one flaw: the lecture slides are posted on Brightspace. While I believe that students who regularly choose to skip classes are choosing to waste their own money, it becomes frustrating when I see my peers who cut performing just as well as me on assignments, just from perusing the materials posted on Brightspace.

But what about the opposite? As much as I dislike overly lenient attendance policies, I also see the flaws in overly stringent ones. A bit over a month ago, I noticed the occasional cough in my classrooms. A week later, every other student was sniffling or hacking. While a certain amount of illness during cold and flu season is inevitable on college campuses, I believe some of it can be attributed to overly stringent attendance policies. 

When students can only afford one or two absences over the course of the semester, staying home for illness just a month into the semester can feel really risky. Additionally, many common illnesses take a couple of weeks to run their course and can be contagious for much of that time, so the “one excused absence” policies can certainly contribute to the spread of illness. 

And these overly strict policies can feel punitive even outside of illness. USC, and Los Angeles as a whole, offer countless unique opportunities to students, many of which coincide with classes. If a student has the opportunity to attend an advanced screening of a film they can’t wait to see, if they’re invited to a big networking event or if a relative is visiting for a day from overseas, they should be able to weigh their options to decide how they’d like to spend their time and money. 

When students are saying “no” to potentially formative life events because they’re scared of a grade deduction, I’d say it’s time to review the attendance policy.

I believe the best classes are those that incentivize attendance by offering key information that can only be accessed in person, except in the case of short-term illness, which should not be penalized. For nonmedical absences, a final grade deduction of one to two  percentage points feels appropriate. 

Here’s hoping the policies get an update.