The Attendance Tragedy

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As an arts student, I regret that I applied to an arts school. People were right when they said it’s probably the worst thing an arts student can do to themselves but what I thought was that originally it may have been because of the lack of creativity. In reality it was about the lack of interest among student and teachers because they simply cared about one thing; if attendance had been marked or not.

During my first week at university, a senior in one of my classes would arrive at the end of the class and just mark his attendance without caring for the lecture. At first I thought that this might be one rare case among many others but I started to notice a pattern as weeks passed by and I got promoted to the coming semesters. The meme that talks about “I go to university for attendance and then come home and teach myself” started to make sense and I finally after failing to change the behavior of my peers to attend lectures too fell victim to the attendance system.

Pakistani academic institutions focus too much on attendance while they should be focusing on improving the quality of education.

Powerpoint presentations, boring lectures and things I probably could easily learn at home without making the effort of going to university contributed to the fact that I simply became concerned with attendance and nothing else. It was not just the fault of students though that they became concerned with attendance only.

The university introduced an online attendance system making it hard for students to mark proxies of their friends. It was quite disappointing to note that this was the first thing at our university that technology replaced but could not get a decent internet connection. I thought at first that all of these factors were only central to my university but it turned out many other institutions followed the same tiring pattern.

Attendance policies in most universities in Pakistan are strict and if one misses more than the number of classes as per a certain university’s policy, they are graded with an F so that makes it understandable for students to take attendance so seriously.

But what’s concerning here is that universities focus too much on attendance as well while they should be focusing on improving the quality of education and considering ways to capture a student’s interest.

The only implementable solution to this is simply stop focusing too much on attendance and install a sense of responsibility in the minds of students who can put it in themselves to come to class and actually learn something valuable and enhance their creative skills (something art schools need to work on). Because those who want to learn would come anyway regardless of caring about attendance and those who don’t will be responsible for their own fate. 

Turyal Azam Khan is a Pakistani writer, blogger, and journalist who mainly focuses on current affairs, social issues, lifestyle, and culture. He has written for Daily Times, Dunya Blogs, The Nation, Naya Daur and The Diplomat.