Rita from Ruidoso Makes a Case For Attendance.

I would bet a considerable sum that those advising Alvin to let the snowflakes sink or swim (well I guess they all melt) are uniformly tenured professors who are no longer subject to the administrative dictatorship of the student evaluation number.

If Alvin is not tenured, he must introduce a mandatory policy. Why? Well, as Mr. Arnaz used to say, this will take some 'splainin'.

At my university, instruction is assessed along three metrics: student evaluation numbers, number of drops, and class grade point average. This is a brilliant bit of administrative jujitsu that allows chairs, deans, vindictive senior faculty etc. to punish nearly any non-tenured faculty member they want. People with high student evaluation numbers almost always either get rid of the deadwood early on (leading to high drops), or grade easily (leading to high class GPA). On the other hand people with low drops and/or low class GPAs get worse evaluations.

This is all greatly exacerbated by the fact that senior faculty tend to either aggressively get rid of deadwood via "the asshole speech" the first day, or grade easily. Then their high student evaluation numbers brings the departmental mean up, at which point the administrators can go against any junior person they don't like by noting that their student evaluation numbers are below departmental average. It would be remiss not to note in passing that this is really aggressively stupid; administrators sincerely want my university to be Lake Wobegon,where all professors' evaluation numbers are above their departmental average. Feh.

Anyhow, I found that in this context a strict attendance policy is an absolute necessity. If you don't do it, the students that miss all semester convince themselves that their bad grade is your fault and give you a much worse evaluation. If you do keep attendance, not only do your students do better, they also think you care (more?) about them