Every fall term since the start of the pandemic, I’ve expected that students will come to class with more energy than the semester before. Yes, Zoom classes and the fear of contagion changed our experiences of higher education, but as the distance from the initial disruption increases, we should get back to how things were, right? Who am I kidding? I just wish more students would come to class in general. Over the past few years, anecdotal evidence and complaints from colleagues far and wide suggest that fewer students are coming to class at major universities across the US. Looking at my spring term, I saw some of this, too, with classes sometimes missing 10–20 percent of the enrolled students even well before midterm. Why should we as educators care about attendance, and what can we do about it?
