Senate Bill No. 0708-15
UNIVERSITY SENATE
UNIVERSITY AT ALBANY
STATE UNIVERSITY OF NEW YORK
Introduced by: Undergraduate Academic Council
Date: March 24, 2008
AMENDMENT TO THE DEREGISTRATION POLICY FOR FAILURE TO
ATTEND
IT IS HEREBY PROPOSED THAT THE FOLLOWING BE ADOPTED:
1.
The policy to deregister students for failure to attend class be amended to
exclude summer and winter sessions, effective Summer 2008.
2.
That the new bulletin description of deregistration policy for failure to
attend be:
Failure to Attend Class: Beginning on the seventh class day, instructors may deregister
students who fail to attend class, explain absence, or officially drop within the first six
days of classes of a term unless prior arrangements have been made by the student with
the instructor. The policy to deregister students is limited to the add period at the
beginning of the semester. For courses that meet only once each week, including
laboratory courses, the instructor may deregister students who do not attend the first
scheduled class. A “class day” is defined as in “Adding a Course” above.
The above policy also applies to quarter (“8 week”) courses on a prorated basis, but said
policy does not apply to Summer nor Winter session courses.
Beginning with the Spring 2000 semester: For courses that meet only once each week,
including laboratory courses, the instructor may deregister students who do not attend the
first scheduled class.
WARNING: Not all faculty exercise this prerogative. The fact that you didn’t attend
doesn’t guarantee that your professor dropped you from the course. Students must take
the responsibility for dropping a course on the Web via www.albany.edu/myualbany.if
they wish to avoid an E or U in that course.
3.
That this proposed amendment be forwarded to the Interim President
George M. Philip for approval.
Rationale
University Senate adopted a policy to allow faculty to deregister students who fail to
attend (without arrangements with faculty member) within the first six days of classes.
This was implemented in the spring of 1993. The brief rationale for the original bill
stated “In the context of current student demand for entry into closed courses . . . .”.
Under this bill professors can deregister students that fail to attend classes in the first 6
days of classes in order to make room for students that do want to attend the class.
The Summer and Winter sessions courses do not present this problem. Courses in these
sessions do not experience high demand as the regular semester length courses do. In
fact, any student that wants to register in the summer or winter sessions, can. Moreover,
during the summer, the university is faced with income targets for these short sessions. In
practice, although the university has very few non-attendance deregistrations in the
summer, deregistered students receive a gift of no tuition obligation because they
typically take only one course, not the full 12 credit load required during Fall and Spring
sessions.
Thus the deregistration policy does not serve the University at Albany during the short
Summer and Winter sessions.
