After my second year at UO, I’ve come to realize how flawed the university’s educational policies are.
For starters, many classes don’t accept late work. Specifically, foreign language classes don’t accept late work by any means — even if you do complete the assignment late, you will not receive any points for it (not even partial credit). This means that if you miss the due date for any reason, you won’t receive any compensation for completing the homework.
The lack of late credit discourages you from learning the missed material, as completing the late homework would be a waste of your time. These strict policies belong in a 1950s boarding school, not a 2020s public college.
This disproportionately affects low-income and minority students, too — it’s hard to turn in assignments on time before their arbitrary due dates when you have a 9-to-5 job. One way to fix this would be to standardize course due dates so that homework is due at 11:59 p.m. every night, rather than at midday for some reason.
The bureaucratic mechanism responsible for most of these policies is the University Senate, which is essentially the ASUO Senate for faculty. It passed a policy in 2022 called the Course Attendance and Engagement Policy, in which professors have to be blind to the reasons why students were absent. However, some professors interpreted this as meaning “let’s be stricter on allabsences.” This, of course, is not the intent of the policy.
In addition, there are other flawed educational policies in play. Many classes require needless discussion periods which serve only for uninterested GEs to fiddle their thumbs for an hour. The university continuously has been shortening their Add/Drop deadlines year after year. Finally, textbooks are required for many classes, but they are never used over the course of the class, only for material from the textbook to be included on the final exam (*cough* Cinema Studies courses *cough*).
So how could UO modernize its educational policies?
First, late work policies should be amended to be less punishing. Students should still be encouraged to complete homework, even if it’s late. This can be done by offering partial credit.
Second, discussion sections should no longer be required for many classes. There is no reason why discussion sections, which are essentially just mandatory office hours, should take up a space on a student’s already packed schedule. Discussion sections should at least have optional attendance.
Finally, professors should be more lenient with unexcused absences. If you’re missing the lecture, chances are you’ll already be getting a lower grade than somebody who attends lectures regularly. There’s no reason why your grade should be lowered because you missed the lecture. If you do still learn the material and maintain good grades without attending the lecture, then that effort should not be punished. You’re the one paying for the class — you should have every right not to attend if you don’t want to. It’s your money.
Or better yet, don’t make classes start at 8 a.m., especially at a party school.
