Anonymous wrote:are professors not required to check in on students if they skip class?

My DS stopped attending a class and not one email or phone call from the professor.

It is very common for college kids to not go to class. It is very common for half of kids to not be in class after the first week or 2 of the semester. Professors never try to check on the location of missing kids. Even in very small classes professors would be unlikely to look into an absence. They would just assume the kid was skipping class.

Anonymous wrote:No.

My BF’s H died during her son’s 1st semester and when he returned he didn’t leave his room for 2 weeks except to go to the bathroom.

Nobody checked on him, nobody cared, nobody GAF.

Her older son was a senior and he had friends check on him and 1 professors checked on him.

It’s pathetic.

That's really sad, but did anyone notify the school's counseling center about the situation? People can't "GAF" if they don't know what's going on.

This would be considered an over-reach. These are adults. They can come to class or skip class at will. Professors are not trained in mental health or psychiatry.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:That’s hilarious.

Of course professors don’t check in on students.

It’s not hilarious. It’s sad and pathetic that universities are not held to some standard to check the welfare of students.

They are adults. It's not a boarding school. It's college.

My coworkers are adults but we check on them when they don’t show up.

My students skip class all the time. If their parents skipped work like the kids skip class, they'd all be homeless. You're comparing apples to oranges.

-- high school teacher

They never did when I was in college. This is college not elementary school.

What?! No. Students are 18 or older, they’re adults. They’re expected to show up and learn. This is why all these helicopter parents who didn’t cultivate their children’s intrinsic motivation have set their kids up for failure.

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Anonymous wrote:No, that’s your job as a parent.

How would a parent even know?

NP. If a student stops going to class due to some sort of crisis/emergency I would imagine they have stopped showing up in other areas of life as well. A parent would know if they did their job.

Anonymous wrote:are professors not required to check in on students if they skip class?

My DS stopped attending a class and not one email or phone call from the professor.

Did you not realize that your son is now adult when he is in college? Does your boss call your mom when you skip work?

This question is bonkers to me. I never had a professor check up on me. Most of them never knew I existed at my very large public university. I would not expect them to be babysitters for my kids now.

I recently left academia but when I was a professor, I checked in on students if they missed an exam. Certainly not if they missed class. There were a couple times I didn't hear back after the missed exam check-ins, at which point I contacted their advisors and Dean's Office so that they could follow up from there. I remember one of the advisors told me I was routinely the only professor who bothered in these situations.

Anonymous wrote:Professors are the last to know when a student drops a class. They aren’t given some special letter. Kids add and drop and withdraw all semester long. Some lecture halls hold 100+ students. Attendance is not taken. The roster is in flux up to the last week. Professors are not trained in mental health techniques or therapies. Get a clue.

+1 Moreover, the litigious nature of parents and students prohibits inquiry on personal matters. Keep it to the academics only. You can’t even give a student a half hug. Etc.

Anonymous wrote:Professors are the last to know when a student drops a class. They aren’t given some special letter. Kids add and drop and withdraw all semester long. Some lecture halls hold 100+ students. Attendance is not taken. The roster is in flux up to the last week. Professors are not trained in mental health techniques or therapies. Get a clue.

DP here (also an R1 uni). This is harsh, but I have to agree with this. Expecting the prof to check in is too much. That is the parent's job, and akin to we are losing good teachers, at the K-12 level. Parents expect too much.

I have taught at several universities. Attendance isn't required for most classes. I certainly had students who never came to class, unless an exam was taking place.

I did teach at one university where attendance was recorded electronically, and counted toward the grade. I did not have access to those records until the final, end of term calculation.

Many large lecture classes have hundreds of students, and you never learn students' names. The teaching assistants might learn them, but not showing up to your small group session is even more common than not showing up to lecture. In many cases, the only contact info you have for a student is their campus email. Contacting them via any other means is considered unprofessional.

When I had advisees who never came to see me, there were people I could contact to check on them. There was never an issue. Certainly, some students in distress did reach out to the university for help.

Professors are there to teach. They're not social workers.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:The problem is 98% of all kids missing class are deliberately missing class. There are no problems...they just don't like the lectures, or they got the short straw and pulled an 8am class...the course is such that they can just study the materials and do perfectly fine on the homework and exams without attending class.

I mean, how would a professor know you are in the 2% that is missing for some major reason?

It’s easy to have a computer alert if a student doesn’t log in for a certain amount of days, or doesn’t swipe for food, or misses an exam, or a multitude of other protections that can be put in place.

Well, the professors don't know if you aren't swiping in for food. Again, this isn't about missing exams...this is missing class. Again, 98% of kids that skip class are deliberately skipping because they don't see a reason to attend.

I never said professors should I said the university should have something in place for students who are MIA.

Heck they test your poop for diseases they can check if you have not swiped in for a week.

Well, perhaps check the title of the thread. Such a weird and completely irrelevant analogy BTW regarding testing your poop.