Some university courses have completely abolished lectures, others only offer recorded lectures. Nevertheless, many courses still offer in-person lectures. Unlike high school, where attending class is compulsory, at university, attending lectures is nearly always optional. This is mainly due to the difficulty of taking attendance as well as the view that students should have a certain level of autonomy. There are changes taking place in other countries like the UK though, where students are required to scan a QR code in the lecture to confirm their attendance. It is unknown if or when this will make its way to Australia and New Zealand.

Students may wonder whether it is worthwhile attending a lecture, especially if they have other important things to do. A 2010 article by Credé and associates reviewed the available evidence and concluded that attendance was strongly related to the grades achieved in a class [1]. An important question though is whether this is simply because those who attend class are more motivated and conscientious in general? In other words, is attending lectures just a manifestation of these traits, and if they didn’t attend they would still do just as well because they study harder overall? Does attending lectures add something additional on top of these individual traits? The review concluded that student characteristics and attending class made separate contributions to final grades. A possible mechanism is that attending class gives another chance to be exposed to the course content. In addition, the lecturer may give additional important information that is not mentioned elsewhere. They may also give hints about test or exam questions as well as guidance on upcoming assignments.

Although many of the studies in the Credé and associates 2010 review pre-dated the widespread availability of lecture recordings, a more recent 2020 review of lecture attendance continued to find a positive association between lecture attendance and grades. Of the 32 courses included in the review, which focused on human bioscience courses, 25 found an association between attending lectures and grades. The remainder did not show an association. The review concluded there was no strong evidence that this relationship was altered by the availability of lecture recordings [2].

Attending class is often a choice between competing alternatives. A student could go to class and get higher grades, or they could sleep-in, hang out with friends, make money through part-time work and so on. In other words, there is a tradeoff between short-term and long-term gains. In many cases, students will tend to make this type of decision consistently. Those who tend to skip one class will also skip other classes. At the end of the day, students need to make a decision whether a lecture is worth attending. On average, failure to attend could mean a small reduction in grades, but if the lecturer is terrible or if the time is really inconvenient, then it may be the logical option not to attend.

Attendance at lectures can vary significantly between universities and even faculties. At the beginning of the semester attendance is usually quite high. In fact, some lecture theatres may not even have enough seats for everyone. However, as the semester progresses, attendance starts to fall off. At some universites the rate at which attendance falls off will be 10% per week, at others it may be 20%, or even higher.

Students may be wondering on a given day if they should attend lectures. It’s not a good habit to randomly skip lectures every time you don’t feel like going. Soon, this habit can spread to other aspects of university like assignments leading to failure and dropping out. Rather, at least make the decision on a somewhat consistent basis. Here’s one possible list of factors that might cause you to legitimately skip a lecture. Your decision process might be somewhat different. If the decision tree leads to independent study, commit to spending at least the equivalent amount of time on study as if you attended the lecture.