Managing Student Absences Updated on August 11, 2025 Faculty have always had to make decisions about how to navigate inevitable student absences, whether due to illness, job interviews, family emergencies, athletic commitments, etc.. While these questions have long been relevant to college teaching, the Covid-19 pandemic unsettled many teachers’ and students’ assumptions about the breadth of available options. In order to effectively manage absences in their teaching context, faculty face three major decisions: 1.) what policies they will articulate about absences to help themselves and their students manage their time, 2.) how to encourage attendance, and 3.) what structures can support student learning through absences. This resource is divided into two pages. This first page is intended to help you think through your choices as you construct a policy that works for you and your students. The second page, Supporting Learning Through Absences is intended to help you identify learning supports that will work in your context, whether that’s relying on more traditional options like having students get notes from a peer and catch up during office hours or leaning on available technologies to record or livestream class sessions. Deciding on a Course Attendance Policy Having a clear attendance policy from the outset can minimize back-and-forth throughout the term and is a way to create a level playing field for students by making sure that all students know what’s expected and what exceptions are available to them. Individual faculty have significant autonomy to design the particulars of their attendance policy, though existing institutional policies can help you identify some guardrails for your own practice. There is an overarching undergraduate attendance policy and graduate and professional student attendance policy , and individual schools and departments may have additional norms. As the existing policies elucidate, students in Massachusetts do have a right to accommodation for religious absences that supersedes individual course policies. You can review religious accommodation syllabus statements for some ideas of how you might communicate about students’ rights and responsibilities. What purpose does attendance serve? When designing an attendance policy, it’s helpful to take stock of why you think it’s important for students to attend class, if you do believe that’s the case. Being able to communicate the reasoning behind the attendance policy to students can help students see the positive benefits attached to attendance. Alternatively, communicating an attendance policy without explaining the connection to learning can result in students feeling like the policy is primarily punitive in nature and can set up an adversarial relationship between you and your students. Some of the reasons faculty tell us they want students to attend class include: Benefiting from diverse peer perspectives : If class time is devoted to group work, discussion, or other activities that benefit from a full class and a range of experiences and perspectives, you might want students to show up in order to further their own learning and that of their peers. Encouraging learning-supportive behaviors : If you notice that the students who skip classes tend to struggle in the course, you might want to encourage their attendance in order to help them learn. Supporting student wellbeing : Frequent absences — or a sudden drop in attendance — can be a sign that students might be struggling with something and could benefit from a little more support. Some faculty collect attendance data in order to be able to make more informed referrals to the Students of Concern team . Practicing professional expectations : You might want students to practice meeting workplace or field expectations by encouraging their on-time, regular presence at class time. What does the research say about attendance policies? Research in teaching and learning shows a relationship between class attendance, course grades, and GPA ( Credé, Roch, and Kieszczynka, 2010 ). There are also strong arguments about why mandatory attendance policies can create a more challenging learning environment for some students. St. Clair (1999) argues against mandatory attendance policies, which can diminish how much agency students feel over their academic behaviors and ultimately compromise students’ motivation. Some have also turned to students to learn more about their experience of attendance policies. Supiano (2022) exposes how remote teaching and learning during the pandemic shifted expectations about attendance and what was possible in terms of making up missed course material and how the switch back to in-person courses resulted in multiple and at times misaligned attendance expectations between students and faculty. In conversation with students with chronic illness, Burke (2021) illustrates how compulsory attendance policies and limited options for making up missed material (e.g. needing to ask a peer for notes instead of being able to access a recording) makes learning more difficult.

More recent research ( Cullen and Oppenheimer 2024 ) tries to harness the benefits of attendance without compromising motivation or needed flexibility. Their study argues for an “optional-mandatory” attendance policy, where students get to choose at the beginning of the semester if they would like attendance to count toward their grade. In their study, students who were assigned to the mandatory attendance policy showed a decline in attendance over the semester, while attendance rates were stable for the “optional-mandatory” group. What factors matter when designing an attendance policy? When designing an attendance policy, there are a number of factors you might consider: Align the incentive system with your goals : You may want to make sure students attend class frequently, and so you might limit the number of excused absences that are available. Or, you might want to make sure you limit the spread of communicable disease, and so you might make it easy for students to stay home — and stay caught up — if they’re sick. Cultivating an intentional relationship with students : Course policies — and their tone — can shape the relationship and rapport you start building with students right from the start of a course. A tone that indicates that you assume the best of students (e.g. that they are there to learn and want to do their part), rather than a punitive or adversarial tone can support student learning. Student health and wellbeing : While you might want to collect information about student attendance in order to have a window of information into student wellbeing, you may also be thinking about designing an attendance policy that takes students physical and mental health seriously. For example, you may want to explicitly name mental health as one of the reasons why students might make use of consequence-free absences over the course of the semester. Respecting students as adult learners : Treating students as adults who are responsible for their own learning might be core to your teaching philosophy, and so you might have limited or no accountability mechanisms in place for attendance. Administrative labor : Depending on the number of students in a given course, and whether or not you have TAs to support administrative tasks, the amount of time and labor you can put towards tracking attendance might inform your policy and protocols. For example, you might want to track excused absences for students but might not have the capacity to manage individual emails to and from students, so you might set up a form where students submit information about their absence, so that you can keep all of that data in one place. What kinds of attendance policies exist? You can review the sample attendance policies to get an idea of the kinds of policies you might craft to clearly communicate attendance expectations. Please note that in Massachusetts, students have a right to accommodation for religious observation, including class absences. See the sample religious observation policies for how you might communicate that right to students. How can I encourage attendance? No matter your attendance policy, there are a number of ways you can encourage student attendance: Get to know students , use their names in class, and follow up — or have a TA follow up — with absent students to let them know that you missed them. Make class sessions interesting, relevant, and worthwhile by using a variety of modalities and connecting material to students’ interests and concerns. Be explicit about in-class opportunities to practice the skills and methodologies that students will be assessed on later in the semester. Give students credit for participating in group work or other in-class activities. Share previous student testimonials about the importance of attending class for course success.