Why USyd’s 90% attendance requirements are becoming a public health risk

Jocelin Chan

I’ll own up to it: I caught a cold earlier this week. It was pretty mild, actually, and luckily for me it cleared up within a couple of days. Nonetheless, in the current health climate, I decided not to attend my classes while I was unwell to avoid spreading my cold around. The more I’ve thought about it, though, the more I’m becoming aware that I could make this call since—as an HDR student—I’m auditing all of my current classes. Since my attendance wouldn’t be marked and graded, I could stay at home and catch up with the PowerPoint slides without consequence or potential punishment.

Most undergraduate students don’t have this luxury. Attendance policies require students to attend at least 90% of classes, meaning students can only miss about one week of classes per semester. Before 2018, this figure had been 80%. 

This policy is restrictive as it is. However, in light of the health guidelines on the current COVID-19 epidemic, it is also dangerous. Public health guidelines encourage those who are experiencing cold and flu symptoms to stay at home. Yet, within these first few weeks of semester, I’m sure we’ve all seen that one person actively cough and sneeze in our lectures or tutorials.

As alarming as it is to witness someone beside you hack up a lung during a time like this, I can understand why students are reluctant to take time off from class. Not wanting to waste the limited amount of days they can take off from class, especially right at the start of semester when they might want to save that week off for something more serious down the track, they decide to soldier on while they can. Unfortunately for the rest of us, they may still be infectious during this time. 

I myself have, in the past, experienced some bad colds that took about two weeks to clear up fully. Confronted with the restrictive 90% attendance policy in 2018, I couldn’t take more than a week off from my tutorials to see out the end of my illness. But what if someone who unknowingly had COVID-19 and—experiencing it only as a mild flu—underwent the same thinking process? They would endanger the lives of anyone in that lecture hall or tutorial room who had chronic health issues or was over age 60 at extreme risk.

With the online learning technologies we have access to, a responsible university would allow their students the option to work from home in this health climate. Asking students to meet this stringent attendance policy puts them at risk in the classroom. Moreover, it requires many to endure long commutes on public transport that can also put them at risk of infection or becoming carriers of the disease and infect more vulnerable people. Instead of waiting for cases to crop up before taking action, we should proactively prevent the spread by loosening this policy.

This 90% attendance policy exists to discourage students from skipping class for arbitrary reasons and promote interaction in class. This percentage, however, is unreasonably demanding and displays a profound distrust for how students manage their own time. Besides that, it’s becoming clear that requiring 90% attendance forces students to take public health risks in a time when we should all be observing good hygiene.