Let’s be honest, most students like when class is cancelled. A cancelled class gives you an extra hour or two to do some laundry, catch up on homework or maybe just take a nap. But the reality is that students are paying to take these courses and losing a day of class means losing money. According to USA Today College, one day of class at a private university is worth over $100. That is a pretty expensive nap. Many professors have some sort of grading penalty for missing more than a certain number of classes and maybe there should be a policy stating how many days a professor is allowed to cancel class. This would prevent a professor from canceling an excessive amount of classes and ensure that the $100 or more worth of class time is well spent.
There are of course instances where the decision of canceling classes is out of the professor’s hands, such as inclement weather that closes down the entire campus. This past January, snow closed down Pacific University’s campus and caused the students taking winter term classes to miss several days in the term. This left the students and professors rushing to fit all of the necessary course information into the few remaining days of class. It would be difficult to restrict the number of days the campus can close due to weather because there is no way to know when a weather emergency will happen. However, in the case of shorter terms like winter term, there should be a way for students to make up the class time that was missed to avoid rushing through the course work as many were forced to do this year. College courses are expensive and students should be getting as much as they can out of their money.
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