A couple of Fridays ago I pulled a somewhat all-nighter. It wasn't a real all-nighter because I accidently went to sleep at 6 a.m. That's irrelevant. Anyway, I was up all night finishing a paper and trying to study for English and Spanish. I had my 8 a.m. chemistry lecture, followed by an English midterm and Spanish oral exam. My roommate Stevie woke me up at 7:45 for class. I started freaking out because I hadn't meant to go to sleep and I didn't get to study everything I meant to. Stevie told me to just skip the chemistry lecture. Attendance is not taken and she said she would take notes. Although the idea of an extra hour to study was desirable, my guilty conscience would not allow me to skip class. While we walked to class we discussed skipping classes, and the topic of how much each individual class costs came up.
I found a PowerPoint that broke down the costs of skipping a class at Eastern Illinois University. They added up the cost of tuition per credit hour, the cost of books and class fees. The PowerPoint estimated that it costs $13.85 to skip a three-credit Monday/ Wednesday/ Friday class and $20.56 to skip a three-credit Tuesday/ Thursday class. These numbers are from the 2005-2006 school year, so I can only imagine that the numbers have gone up. The math, I'm not so sure about it. I have heard $15, $90 and $140 per credit hour. I really don't know what is right and what is wrong. I am not a math major and right now it is a Sunday afternoon and I really don't want to try and figure it out.
On thestudentsblog.com a blog went up looking at the cost of skipping class at seven big name universities. It estimated that a skipped class at Princeton costs $300. Harvard came in at $242, Yale costs $241, University of Pennsylvania costs $243 and Massachusetts Institute of Technology costs $238. California Tech was a bit lower with $195, and Stanford came in the cheapest at $82.
The author took yearly tuition for each school, divided it into two semesters, and then further divided over the average course load and the number of class sessions per course per semester. Again I do not know if the cost is correct, and the schools used in this example were incredibly expensive. The article has a forum at the bottom where readers could post their opinions.
"When I first entered college in 1985, I started skipping Calculus about one week in. The instructor was just reviewing the algebra I already knew. I'd skip a day here, then a couple days. Eventually, I skipped a whole week. When I got back to class, I was totally lost! After that, I was too embarrassed to go back," said one poster.
"Tuition is a sunk cost. Since you have to pay it whether you go to class or not, it is not actually costing you money to skip class. Paying the tuition gives you the option to go to class. The real cost of skipping the class is the information you get from the class. If you have something to do that is more valuable to you than the information you can gain from the class, it is a better decision to skip class, regardless of how much tuition was. It is like if you pay $10 or $1 million to go see a movie, but it sucks, it is a bad decision to sit through it to the end no matter what you paid," said another poster by the name of Aaron.
Although I personally think it is a waste of money to skip a class, there is so much more to lose than just the money. I am a worrier, so I always think of the worst-case scenarios. The day I skip a class is going to be the day that there is a pop quiz, or an important lecture is given, or the professor will go over what is going to be on an exam. My roommate and I will probably always disagree on skipping classes, but that's OK. My conscious and I will be going to every class. What I do during the class doesn't matter, but I will be there.
