Keene State Considers Incentives for Friday Morning Classes

Pandering to Babies!

Paying students to attend classes? What is this? If you want students to attend your early morning and Friday classes, schedule the class and then FLUNK the students who don't show up.

I am not sure what is going on in this nation with education. Why is it that we are pampering and pandering to the students? Isn't the educations system supposed to be preparing its students for the real world? Are companies going to give them bonuses for showing up on time or working on a work day? NO!

Paying them to attend is not going to help them. It's going to spoil them and make their lives in the real world more difficult!

Discounting is not Paying

Discounting classes is certainly not equivalent to paying students to attend those classes. The word used in the title of this post, "incentive," seems to be a much better description than the phrase ("paying students") used to link to the student newspaper article. Differential pricing, while complicated, may be a pretty good idea for institutions looking to ensure their resources are being effectively used.

Universities in the real world ...

... schedule more classes and sections than will actually be filled with students. Were that not true, no one could complete a BA in four years -- the system has to have some excess capacity, if it's going to operate at all smoothly.

Students in the real world consider schedules, along with teachers and subject matter, when they pick courses. And students have a demonstrated pattern of avoiding both early mornings and Fridays.

Administrators in the real world need to find ways of increasing the efficient use of their most constrained resource, which is often classroom space.

And managers in the real world know that -- when motivating employees with intelligence, education, or both -- it's necessary to use carrots as well as sticks. Rely on the stick too much, your best students (who easily can) transfer out, your best prospects (who have many options) choose another school, your institutional reputation goes in the toilet, your alumni/donors get mad, and you get a chance to practice your job search skills.