You’re 20 years old. The alarm goes off. You’ve got biology class. You decide you want to sleep in and skip the lecture. Somewhere, across campus, an RFID chip scanner feels lonely.
Seriously, are we going to treat college students like high school freshmen?
Students who are thinking about sleeping late and skipping that morning class may have a new incentive to roll out of bed at one Arizona university this fall.
Northern Arizona University will install an electronic system that detects when each student with an ID card walks through the door to some large classrooms. The system will produce an attendance report for the instructor.
NAU President John Haeger said that, along with the card readers, he will "strongly encourage" faculty to require students to attend their freshman- and sophomore-level courses. Although the university isn't planning to implement a mandatory-attendance policy [yet—mg], the new technology and Haeger's prodding likely will prompt more faculty to use attendance or class participation as part of a student's final grade.
Some students at NAU don’t like this from a Big Brother/ “invasion-of-privacy” standpoint. But given that they chose to attend this school and pay to go there, I think that’s small potatoes.
I’m bothered by the idea that we’re going to track college students like their Connecticut elementary school kids. If you choose as an adult not to go to class—that’s your business. If you choose to study 18 hours a day, that is, too. You’re a grown-up. Act like it.
“But Michael,” you whine, “these children need guidance. They won’t go to class and 50% of American college students fail to graduate in 4 years. They’re too young for this responsibility.”
Really? Tell that to the 19-year-old sitting on top of a humvee in Afghanistan with a 50-caliber machine gun in front of him. He’s making life-and-death decisions, and he doesn’t have a teacher peeking over his shoulder, either.
You want to know why 18-year-olds act like children? Because we treat them like they are.
“If a young adult cannot produce enough of value to justify being paid a living wage, nothing we do to the minimum wage will help. He, the institutions which trained him and the society in which he lives, have far bigger problems."
--Economist Tim Harford 
