Maya Linderman '09 almost never misses a class. Considering a psychology major, the sophomore says Brandeis' $40,000-plus tuition a year is too much to justify absenteeism."You're spending [a lot] of money to go to college," Linderman says. "So you kind of have to go."

For Benjamin Kramer '09, the value of attendance goes beyond getting his money's worth.

"I feel that the professor adds a certain schtick to [the material]," Kramer says. "Maybe he'll go off on a tangent that makes you understand it better."

In recent months around the country, educators have pointed to sagging class attendance at universities. And while professors and students here acknowledge that online class materials have prompted more students to play hooky, it seems that Brandeis students show up for class far more often than their big-university counterparts.

Responding to low attendance, professors at universities like Mississippi State University have begun taking attendance at all freshman courses and following up with those students who frequently miss class, the New York Times reported this summer. At Georgetown, professors have the right to fail freshmen and sophomores who miss over 15 percent of a single course.

But even as professors acknowledge factoring attendance into grades less, they say attendance is rarely a major issue.

Prof. Harry Michael Coiner (ECON) says he doesn't take attendance but he has noticed slight drop-offs in turnout in the last four years since more class materials were made available on WebCT, but the drop doesn't concern him. "When people come to college, they're supposed to be mature," he says. "It makes it a little bit like high school to take attendance,"

At Brandeis, absenteeism occurs most often in large lecture courses, professors and students say.

"It depends on the professor," says one junior, a pre-med, psychology and theater major, describing how he can afford to miss larger lecture courses, but not interactive theater courses.

Dean of Arts and Sciences Adam Jaffe points to distinctions between types of classes at Brandeis that often determine whether or not students attend class. Jaffe says that in foreign language, "participation in class and speaking in class is an important part of the learning process." In lecture-style classes, he says, "there are other ways of substituting for what's happening in the lecture."

Prof. Irving Epstein (CHEM) says that when he posted lecture notes online one year, "attendance did appear to go down."

Some educators have suggested more engaging classes as one answer to absenteeism, the Times reported, and Brandeis professors also highlight the correlation between interactivity and class attendance.

Prof. Andreas Teuber (PHIL) says he has "always been deeply committed to having part of each class, even if it's 200 people, engage in a conversation." Similarly, Prof. Susan Birren (BIO) says she dedicates certain class periods to student-led activities such as individual presentations.

Where students and professors disagree is whether or not students can frequently miss class and still receive high grades. When one junior, who did not want to be identified, took a physics course last year that met at 9 a.m. three day a week, he went to class only five times during the semester.

"I got an A minus at the end," he says.

Even first-years seem to have quickly learned that they can miss lecture classes and still learn the course information. Brian Fox '10 says he sometimes skips chemistry and psychology lectures because he can learn the same material from reading the textbook.

But professors disagree. Many claim that exams and papers are based heavily on class discussions and the material covered in class. In Teuber's philosophy classes, "everything that we're doing in class is intimately tied to ... what [students] go on to do when they try to write a paper." Similarly, Birren structures her exams around material covered in class.

"People that don't show up for class on a regular basis ...tend not to do as well in class," she says.