The world we live in, with the people we live with, require accomodations every single day.
Not locking a door allows the students who were delayed on the road by a car accident, as much as the disabled student who took five minutes longer than expected after falling down some stairs.
Every single person makes mistakes at times. If those are not absorbed by flexibility, then they go on to affect everyone else connected to the punished.
If the professor is delayed due to a tire puncture, should they lose their tenure?
It also allows the people actually in the class a lesson uninterrupted by random people for variety of good/bad reasons.
Most 90% of students is not late on any given day. Should they all be penalized for the actions of a few?
The request is not to transfer the burden onto the 90%, but to design a system where the 10% are able to participate without impeding the 90%.
For example, if students enter from the rear of the room, then delayed students can join without disrupting the on-time students.
If we start the design process with the awareness that some students will be late, then we can design systems which support all students.
Here’s a process for that 10%: wake up 30 minutes earlier to create a buffer that allows for unexpected events like traffic and for expected events like “I just can’t seem to be on time, maybe I’m sick.”
I’ve been in the 90% at times and in the 10% at others. People should be entitled to grace, and we shouldn’t just assume anyone who isn’t absolutely punctual is a malingerer. Unless you live alone on a thousand acres you’re perpetually giving other people grace for their foibles and they’re giving you grace for yours.
So you're happy to punish 10% of students, for no fault of their own. You'll trade a moment's distraction, for a paid-for day's learning.
That, is a lack of empathy. Especially as for about the last hundred years universities have had a process that allows for the necessary flexibility.
To take this to the extreme... Should we simply fire everyone who is late to work, without reason? If someone else causes a car accident, should we simply revoke the licenses of everyone involved, regardless?
Come now, we can be more extreme than that! Late for class, your city gets nuked. Forget an assignment, bioweapon deployed. Bomb an exam, and you're on the first plane to the front lines in Ukraine.
See also: we can reduce the number of police and compensate by increasing the penalties for crime (late 20th century edition).
> Should we simply fire everyone who is late to work, without reason?
Not necessarily, but I think you’d see a much more consistent attendance rate. Which is of course the whole point of such a policy.
The student is the employer, though. They are paying the university for a service. They aren't the employee.
The student is the customer, not the employer, if you must phrase it in those terms.
And I think education benefits when you define the student as a student, before anything else.
Jonathan Haidt details quite a few reasons why treating a student as a customer creates bad incentives and poor outcomes (just agreeing with you on the student-first point)
Those educational benefits are being denied here, for reasons outside the customers hands.
>If the professor is delayed due to a tire puncture, should they lose their tenure?
This seems like a false equivalency. The student isn’t getting dropped from their degree program, they’re missing a class. If a professor is late, especially habitually late, I may not advocate for them losing tenure, but I’d certainly expect it to have a smaller impact like being brought up in a performance review.
They're missing a class, yes.
A class that they have paid to access.
A class that the professor would not be teaching, if they did not believe it essential to the degree program.
They are being denied access to something both important, and already paid for.