Every college student can expect to run into at least one teacher that will make their classes mandatory at the risk of their students' grades. Some give two excused absences, but beyond that, their students’ grades pay the price. Be it an increment or a full letter grade, it will go down. The question is whether that should be allowed. Is that the right way to go about things?

As a college student, you pay money in order to take the classes needed to go toward your major. And let’s be honest, you are forking up a lot of dollar signs in tuition. So, should your teachers really be able to make a class that you are paying for mandatory? Should they be able to affect your grade in a negative way, for simply missing a couple of classes?

Life happens and sometimes gets in the way of prior engagements. It is physically impossible to control the number of incidents from outside forces in the world. It is almost a guarantee that things will happen more than twice in the year that you are in school. Family members pass away, car accidents happen, sickness invades the body, weather can be treacherous and work schedules can be inflexible. All of those things and more could get in the way of making it to the one class where you know that you can get the notes from other people and turn the homework in online. Teachers that set a limit on the number of absences allotted to their students—at the price of their grades—give the aura of them not caring about their students doing well in their class.

For example, there’s a class where the teacher announces that every student can only have two excused absences. They support this rule by saying that the university has this rule on attendance that they are just upholding. Many of those rules say that an absence can only be excused through family bereavements, military duty, subpoenas, jury duty, religious observances and illness. But, the only way illness will be excused is through a written documentation that verifies that they were too sick to make it to class. There are very few times where a doctor gives a letter without some prying. And visits to the clinic are expensive for some people, especially when they just have the flu and don’t want to risk puking in class.

In the teacher’s defense, maybe they think that putting this rule in their syllabus will ensure that their students will succeed in their class—that by putting this rule into effect, it forces their students to do well. But that is not always the case. Sometimes, when a student doesn’t show up, they have a legitimate reason. Should a student be forced to give up a letter grade because they end up catching something going around campus? Or should the teacher work with the student to help them make up for missing the participation points for the days that they miss?