r/Professors • u/realliveperson • 2d ago
You can lead a horse to water…
I teach at a small college. Despite being small, we manage to get some impressive guest lecturers to come every semester. We purposefully schedule the lectures so that there are no conflicting classes and yet the student attendance is abysmal, especially from my program. It’s embarrassing. I encourage all my students to go and I try to hype up the lectures but they usually give shoddy excuses for not attending. I’m considering giving them extra credit for attending but this is just one example of a larger issue of student disengagement. How do I tell them that things in life aren’t just handed to them???
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u/skinnergroupie 2d ago
Unfortunately, extra credit is the only way. We're small, recently had our annual speaker, someone who I think would have been a "natural" draw, got 250 people, 95% were students attending for EC. That said, they were super engaged so maybe once we incentivize them getting there they actually lean into it a bit?
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u/Fit-Bluejay2216 2d ago
Our society does not value experts. They have no connection to strangers and don’t see the value in attending, Pretty common experience here, too.
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u/totallysonic Chair, SocSci, State U. 2d ago
I’m not sure this is a new thing. When I was an undergrad, I didn’t go to optional lectures unless there was some great incentive (extra credit, fun swag, etc.) or it seemed really crucial to my interests, like someone discussing how to get a career I wanted.
I went to these sorts of things in grad school simply because we were told it was expected, and absences made us look bad. But undergrads don’t care about that.
In my department basically the only way to get students to attend an event is making it a course requirement. We have senior research presentations every semester and all students must present their research to graduate. One would think that juniors would like to attend this event to learn what they’ll have to do next year, but one would be wrong.
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u/yamomwasthebomb 2d ago
“How do I tell them that things in life aren’t just handed to them???”
This is the wrong question: I think you’re missing why they don’t have motivation. They have learned—correctly—that even when we actually do the things we’re told, there is no reward. The recessions and gig economy killed middle-class fantasies, the pandemic killed any facade of a reliably stable society, and the last three elections killed any hope of a meritocracy.
The selling points of college were traditionally a) have fun and b) get ahead. The latter is no longer guaranteed… so why should I work hard for a maybe when I can guarantee a fun time? Why read the text when no one reads ever? Why write fact—based persuasive essays when everyone in power constantly lies? Why research when all the research is being canceled?
College has always asked students for a sacrifice of their youth, their time, their money, their effort. Now we’re asking them to sacrifice with no hope for the future… which means it’s solely about intrinsic motivation. Plus, they are more unprepared than ever, so we’re asking them to make up the difference of even more broken systems. Not to mention the societal attack on expertise and experience, all while AI may very well kill entire industries in the next decade anyway.
You complain about how they want “handouts”—which I definitely understand. But when I talk to students in high school and college, I see what’s behind the entitlement: “If working hard isn’t going to benefit me, can you at least make it quick?”
If want to motivate students, we have to prove to them that they will grow in personal and professional ways that are useful in this upcoming world. Extra points won’t do that.
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u/realliveperson 2d ago
Thank you for the thoughtful comment - I totally get where you and the students are coming from. The frustration isn’t really about the sense of entitlement. I think it’s anxiety that if they don’t apply themselves above the basic requirement of a college education, then they won’t find success after school. I get the myth of meritocracy, but I see that the students who are more engaged are getting more opportunities because they chase it. The ones who aren’t are unemployed post-graduation. Extra points won’t do that, you’re right. But I also don’t want them to take on my anxiety about their future. I don’t even think they understand how hard it is out there right now.
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u/Mother_Anteater8131 2d ago
Speaking frankly, people don’t want to attend lectures they don’t have to. They can be productive with that time in other ways, so you have to really make it worth their while.
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u/Huck68finn 2d ago edited 2d ago
They won't do anything unless there is some sort of grade attached to it. And oftentimes even extra credit won't work. It has to be required. There is little to no intellectual curiosity
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u/LetsGototheRiver151 2d ago
What gets measured is what gets done. Students will do almost nothing that doesn’t have points associated with it.
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u/AccomplishedDuck7816 2d ago
Make it a required assignment. When I was in college, we were required to attend outside university events.
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u/knitty83 2d ago
The only guest lecture students will attend is one that is taking place during their class. I went through experiencing two really major, major incidents of second-hand embarassment with guest lecturers before I realized that's just what it is. You can invite somebody for *your* class, and open it to other interested students and faculty.
We don't really have students clubs here, but a student union of sorts. They organize(d) all sorts of events: movie nights, exam prep, writing workshops, (board) game nights... post-Covid, people just don't come anymore. They've all but given up. It really is sad how university has become what some of you here call "degree mills". I can't even blame students for looking at their education in this way, when that old, romanticized version of studying for studying's sake just doesn't exist anymore - and, honestly, never really existed in the first place.
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u/Llama1lea 2d ago
We used to have students enrolled in a lab course attend one seminar a semester as part of their grade in the class. Listening to other people’s experiments is an important part of doing experiments. Our department had 3 speakers a semester. Students could attend any of the 3. We had a sign in sheet and reflective assignment post attendance. Students with conflicts could ask permission to attend another event, we usually suggested attending a seminar in a related department. Students could also attend a seminar at anoth university in town or one hosted by our local chapter of our professional organization. These were only options for students with conflicts who asked permission. We encouraged students not to wait until the last talk to attend because it might then be difficult to find a replacement if they suddenly couldn’t make it to the last seminar. This spread the distribution of attendances out. The last seminar of the semester was still always the best attended.
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u/tochangetheprophecy 2d ago
We give extra credit left and right for things. It's the only way to get them to go. Well some units (student affiars) give prizes at everything.
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u/logically 2d ago
Give extra credit! I scream excitement towards my field to increase engagement. I need them to trust me to show them why Bob Dylan is cool after they've predicted a the molecular peak order of a high pressure liquid chromatography lab.
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u/skella_good Assoc Prof, STEM, PRIVATE (US) 2d ago
You need to make the sessions mandatory if you want them to go.
We also need to consider the fact that students may not want to sit there and be talked at. Their perception is that they can go on YouTube, TED, etc, to hear anyone in the world.
Is there another way we can incorporate guest scholars into your course that will be more meaningful?
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u/ImpatientProf Faculty, Physics 2d ago
We attended talks because there was an offering of coffee and cookies.
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u/judashpeters 2d ago
Extra credit is fine, don't feel bad about that.
The long term goal is to cultivate a culture of student enthusiasm.
If your upperclassmen are excited about the lecturer, then the underclassmen will be as well. You and your department will have to work hard to make that happen. Just a thought. That's what I did. Now our students are the ones who bring speakers.
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u/Owl_of_nihm_80 2d ago
We schedule important guests during a class so there is some built in audience.
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u/OccasionBest7706 Adjunct, Env.Sci, R2,Regional (USA) 2d ago
If it doesn’t relate to passing their classes, they aren’t interested. Hell, I wasn’t either at that age.
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u/skella_good Assoc Prof, STEM, PRIVATE (US) 2d ago
You need to make the sessions mandatory if you want them to go.
We also need to consider the fact that students may not want to sit there and be talked at. Their perception is that they can go on YouTube, TED, etc, to hear anyone in the world.
Is there another way we can incorporate guest scholars into our courses that will be more meaningful?
Edit: typo
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u/fairlyoddparent03 1d ago
This resonates with me. Nationally known speakers don't even spark interest. It's so frustrating.
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u/Life-Education-8030 1d ago
It's tough with extra credit because some students may have work obligations too. With hybrid classes, if the lecture isn't streamed, it's also impossible for online students to attend. Then do you have to monitor who goes AND STAYS and witness the ones who sign in and then turn around to leave. What I tend to do is when I schedule lectures, I ALSO invite the community and that boosts attendance. If there is less room for students, so be it. They will see that events are worthwhile and the speakers are less likely to be insulted.
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u/banjovi68419 1d ago
I remember going to lectures in undergrad for no reason other than love of the game. Everyone had to give the other students extra credit - this was like 2003.
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u/Yurastupidbitch 1d ago
They have to have an incentive or there is no value in attending. Extra credit is key.
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u/andropogon09 Professor, STEM, R2 (US) 2d ago
Extra credit. "Hey prof, sign my thing while I spend the lecture looking at my phone."
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u/I_Research_Dictators 1d ago
Tldr: I skipped entire semesters taking only the final and got As to Cs in those classes. It is not rational to attend if there is no perceived benefit.
Back in the day, when I was majoring in economics as an undergrad, the entire department graded on exams only or maybe 90% on exams. They all had policies that the final exam was the makeup for all missed exams.
I didn't attend Econometrics I and got a B (these are late 80s grades on late 80s difficulty material). I didn't attend Labor Economics and got a C. I didn't attend Econometrics 2 and got a B. A few that I don't remember, I got As without attending. Micro I and II, I attended because I wanted to hear the professor. Macro I, I attended. Macro 2, I skipped and got an A. Outside economics, I skipped Intro to Financial Management, where the professor had some daily quizzes and got a C. The next semester, the professor told me I had the high score on the final and asked why I didn't come to class. I said, something like, the prerequisites are Money and Banking, Macroeconomics and Microeconomics , Acounting 1 and 2, Stats 1, and Business Calculus. It took me 5 minutes with the book and 1 lecture to realize there was nothing new here that just applying the other classes wouldn't cover.
My point, there has to be something to make a lecture worth attending or a rational student won't attend. Those things could be grading for attendance, graded work in class, covering the material differently than the book and including that in tests, telling students that if they come asking for a recommendation later you need to remember them from class, or any number of things.
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u/Art_Music306 2d ago
Just give the extra credit.
Or required attendance for at least two speakers/performances/events as related to the class or field of study.
Otherwise they won’t go- they literally don’t know what they are missing, and sometimes we have to make them engage for our sake, and the sake of the program, if not theirs.