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Is it ethical for a lecturer to require students to purchase an online learning kit where kit is used for course assessments?
I am taking a course in a may-not-be-top-but-still-decent university located in North America. The course lecturer forces us to pay for an online learning kit from Pearson by adopting all the graded quizzes provided in that learning kit.
That is, if one refuses to pay for the learning kit, he or she will have no access to all the quizzes, which in total constitute 20% of the final grade of that course. Moreover, all the text completion questions are basically exactly the same sentences copied from the eBook. Therefore, if you simply pay for the learning kit (~$50), then you will have a hard time doing the quiz as compared of those who buy the combo including the eBook (~$90).
In summary, if

you pay ~$90, during every quiz, simply do CTRL+F, you can always find the exact sentence in the eBook, and hence you can get nearly full marks.
you pay ~$50, you can access the quizzes, but you may have to search somewhere else and spend more time on the quizzes.
If you pay nothing, the 20% marks are gone.

I, as a victim who unwillingly paid $90, find it irritating and unethical, as I feel this is some sort of a coalition between the lecturer and the publisher. I understand that some lecturers do have recommended textbooks as well, but they are not mandatory! That is, if I can learn that course well by other books, I am free to do that. If I didn't buy the book and hence screwed the course up, that is my own responsibility. I cannot blame any one for that. But this lecturer's deed actually bans the students who do not pay for the learning kit from the quizzes.
Is this ethical? Wait, is it even legal? How may I fight for our rights as students on this issue?

Yes, it is unethical for students to pay $40 to get answers to the online quizzes.  So don't do that.

@JeffE That part is still tolerable, as I can just save my $40 and finish the quizzes with other learning materials. The intolerable part for me is the elementary $50. If I do not pay that, I do not even have the access to the quizzes!

$50 is really not that much to pay for a textbook.  The fact that part of your required textbook is online is completely irrelevant.

@JeffE Misunderstanding here! :) $50 is the access to the quizzes, $40 is for the eBook. I said $40, which is the eBook, is Ok. The $50 part, the access to the quizzes, is unreasonable.

How is this different from an assignment that says "do the questions at the end of Chapter 7 in the course text. Hand in questions 3, 5, and 9." That also requires you to buy the text, does it not?

@KateGregory No, it is different. In your case, I can go to the library to fetch the book or even borrow it from someone else. I can still finish the questions and submit my quiz. In my case, if I do not pay for the access, my university account has no access to the quiz at all, leading to a big fat zero for the quiz. Even if I manage to "borrow" someone's account and get the questions, I cannot submit my answers for myself through my account!

Farticle Pilter's last comment makes a valid point, it seems to me.

There are two issues here: is it considered ethical and should it be?  My impression is that it is not widely considered problematic, but Farticle Pilter makes a reasonable case that perhaps it should be.

My feeling is similar to @AnonymousMathematician's: I would call the practice inadvisable, but I am not aware of some well agreed-upon (say, by most American academics) ethical principle that it violates.

As to legal: that seems a bit much.  It certainly does not violate any state or federal laws.  I am confident that it is not against the rules of my university.  You haven't told us what your university is, so I can't speak for it, but it seems much more likely that there could be some faculty feeling against this practice rather than an actual rule against it.

Sorry, let me correct for my misunderstanding: $90 is really not that much to pay for a textbook. The fact that part of your required textbook is interactive is completely irrelevant.

I feel that professors and PhD students who use those learning kits do so because it makes their work easier, while knowing that quality of the exercises, powerpoint lecture notes, test bank questions, whatever the package provides are significantly lower than what a teacher could've provided had they put effort into it. This is unethical.

@BenCrowell Yes. Sorry! Edited! facepalm

@Akavall -- maybe, maybe not, but rather off topic to the question.

@Akavall I know of a good University where the school doesn't have money for graders, so it is the school which adopted this general "online assignments" approach. In those cases, the profs and PhD students are hardly to blame, and I would not expect the Professor to grade all assignments in an 100+ students introductory class... Also note that the alternative is to increase the tuition to cover the cost of graders, which would be much better for students, BUT, most students find paying an extra 90 bucks for a "toolkit" acceptable but would revolt for a 50 bucks increase in tuition...

Personally, I find it unethical that there is anything like a "text completion" quiz in today's day and age.  I'd demand my money back from the course.  Then again, I much prefer courses that actually try and impart actual understanding instead of rote memorization.

@martinf, my comment is indirectly related to the OP's question; that's why I made my post a comment, not an answer.

@NickS, Fair Point. Sure, there are some cases where using some package is the best choice. But in my school, I as a late PhD student was expected to spend 20 hours on teaching, and I had an early PhD as a TA for just one 200 people class. I did prepare the lectures, exercises, tests myself. It is doable within 20 hours. However, some people I knew used a package that provided them with everything; they spent little time on teaching, though they agreed that quality of their teaching was low,, (but they need every minute to focus on their research !?). I think this is pretty common.

@JeffE the fact that the textbook is interactive is not irrelevant at all. Physical textbooks can be shared and resold. Paying one semester's depreciation on a $90 textbook (which can be minimised by being careful with the book) is a very different proposition to paying $90 to 'rent' an online resource for one semester. There is also a big difference in how one perceives the publishers pricing strategy - an online resource has essentially no marginal cost, so there is a lot more incentive for the publisher to act anti-competitively.

@jwg "Paying one semester's depreciation on a $90 textbook (which can be minimised by being careful with the book) is a very different proposition to paying $90 to 'rent' an online resource for one semester." Your university must have significantly more generous buyback rates than mine did.

@Fomite I attended a large, public, US university, and I often ended up paying only like $30 for a textbook, net.  I would pay for a used copy at the bookstore for $50 or $60, and then sell it back at the end of the semester for $15 to $20.  Granted, this is the exact reason why textbooks cost so damn much, but that's not the issue under scrutiny here.

@Fomite: you should cut out the middleman, and sell directly to students in the year below.

I am surprised that the legal ramifications of the issue that the professor is forcing the class to disclose personal data (the fact that someone is studying a particular subject, along with a part of their success in that subject) to a third party outside of the university have not been brought up in any of the answers or comments.

@O.R.Mapper Same thought I had. I also empathize with OP's general irritation over what seems like an unreasonable requirement.

I'll start with

How may I fight for our rights as students on this issue?

For one, politely express your displeasure to the professor.
Some professors aren't in tune with the cost of textbooks, and may not realize what a burden it is to shell out $90 for their course, when it's $90 that you can't recoup by selling back the text, or avoid by using the library's copy of the text.
They may even think they're doing you a favor by offering this "interactive" system, not realizing that you don't find it useful.
If the professor isn't interested in hearing what you have to say, you can further express your displeasure in the end-of-course evaluation (my university's specifically ask about the textbook) and possibly in a respectful letter (signed by your classmates) to the department chair.

Is this ethical?  Wait, is it even legal?

As the other answers have pointed out, it's not universally considered unethical or illegal.
As unpleasant as the result is in this case, it probably would not be a good thing to set too many bureaucratic rules on what textbook or other educational resources a professor can assign. Given that the cost of tuition is usually many times higher than the textbook price, it is generally desirable for the professor to assign the textbook that will (in his/her opinion) offer you the best educational experience and therefore, the best return on your tuition investment.
Of course, students tend to appreciate when the professor can find a low-cost option that is also educationally sound. But that's generally considered a bonus, not a requirement.
In this case it sounds like the extra content doesn't contribute anything useful to the educational experience - in which case, you should let the professor know. (Again, politely and non-combatively.)
I also want to point out that requiring "bundled" course content that goes along with the textbook is closer to assigning a required software package (which, unlike textbooks, you can't buy used or re-sell) than assigning a textbook. I agree with you completely that it's substantially different than being asked to pay for a textbook.
For every class I've ever taken that required specialized (non-free) software, my university installed the software on my laptop for me for free (given that I was registered for the course in question). In most cases, instructors try to use free software or software that comes with a free student license, because they realize that a software purchase is different from a textbook purchase. Or they'll provide the software on lab computers that students can use during set hours.
Imagine if you had to buy a new non-refundable software package for almost every class you were enrolled in, including buying the same software multiple times for a sequence of intro classes on a subject.
Yeah, it's a waste of money, but your professors might not see that unless you point it out.

+1 This is a very reasonable and well thought-out answer, and my own opinion on how to handle this is exactly the same. It is a great skill to be able to look at both sides and stay open-minded and reasonable while still speaking out and asking for a change.

@BenCrowell I wouldn't necessarily agree, I personally have had success with this method! Some professors do actually want what's best for students, and just haven't thought through the full implications of the bundled courseware.

@BenCrowell also, success doesn't necessarily mean prof has to abandon the courseware - it could just mean prof agrees, "I'll also make quizzes available on paper (or in Blackboard) for students who don't want to buy the courseware"

Unfortunately, I had a tenured professor that made us pay 100 dollars for his quiz booklet -- it was a loose leaf page bound by O-rings. It literally would take > $2.00 in the printing shop to copy, but he charges it because he "wrote" it. Keep in mind this guy apparently is the longest teaching professor in our school. Many people have expressed politely to the school and this professor about the booklet, but frankly, they really don't care.

@theGreenCabbage sadly, there is no foolproof way to make people care (if they don't).

It's something I am internalizing as I enter my third year in engineering.

@theGreenCabbage wow, I hope your experience hasn't been that most don't care :(

I may be idealistic in that way, but in general most classes I've attended so far haven't been that they don't necessarily care, but they can't care because the first two year classes are so large in order to get general-ed out. I'm hoping as I enter my pre-junior year, class sizes will become smaller :).

@theGreenCabbage ah yes, "can't afford to care" is a tough problem that I have some sympathy for

It certainly is hard when lecture sizes are 200+. Engineering can be self-esteem draining as you feel like a number rather than an individual. So I certainly feel "idealistic" that things may not go the way I wish it could be (where students feel rewarded for their hardwork, and professors that take the time to care), but it's something I am internalizing, and understanding :).

-1 If a professor demands that you pay him $1,000 to give you a sheet of simple exercises for 20% of your grade, it's unethical. If it's $1,000 to someone else, it's unethical. If it's $100, it's also unethical. The unethical lies on obligating someone to pay something for one specific person/company in exchange of same grade. That leaves no option to the student, he can't choose alternatives. The amount and the receiving person doesn't change that.

@theGreenCabbage:  In order:  Complain to the professor, then the undergraduate program administrator, then the student union, then the department chair, then to the associate dean, then to the dean.  Don't complain to a higher level unless the lower level has heard your complaints and been unhelpful.  If none of those people care, then you're probably out of luck.

In addition to the, so far, three other fine answers, are these two important points:
(1) Was the compulsory extra course fee announced up front, at the time you signed up or paid for the course? If so, you may have little recourse. On the other hand, if this "extra fee" was sprung upon you after the fact, then this could be an example of trading/bargaining in bad faith and is condemned universally.
(2) Even if the $50 fee for the basic learning kit were deemed acceptable, it appears that the students now have the option of either doing some homework themselves or paying another $40 for someone else (OK, in this case it's a something else) to do it for them. That could be seen, in a small way, as buying an educational credential, and should also be condemned universally.

I feel that (1) is a key point.  I am willing to use the word "unethical" to describe the practice of telling a student only after the fact about a hidden fee.  Such fees should be announced in advance, so that students are afforded the opportunity to visit the instructor, the department chair, etc. and say "I would like to take Course X, but I am not comfortable paying mandatory fee Y.  What alternative arrangements can you tell me about?"

@Ben: All the instructors at your school will be unsympathetic when approached about this in advance?  I don't see how you could know that.  One reason for disclosing this in advance is that there are usually other sections or other courses (it is certainly not always true that the student needs that particular course) and always other schools.  If a department or a university is intent on requiring students to pay these extra fees, students should go elsewhere unless they feel there is corresponding value added to offset the additional fee.

About your example with the glossy fuschia-colored paper: the ethical violation would come if the instructor does not have a good reason to believe that the additional fee confers some educational value.  In some courses, customized paper might have some educational effect: even in (public!) junior high school arts courses I remember being told which materials were acceptable to use for a project and which (less expensive) ones were not.

Choosing how much you want to pay is a fundamental feature of American higher education.  There are some students who pay more than $100K more than others for an education for which the added value is subtle and subjective.  At my university an in-state undergraduate student who maintains a 3.0 GPA pays zero tuition.  On the other hand, students have to buy their own "blue books" for exams (they are sold in the university bookstore and even in local convenience stores).  Is this an "ethical violation"?  I don't think so.  Students choose what they are and are not willing to pay for.

Also: I was accepted to the same Ivy League school (IVS) both undergrad and grad, went elsewhere as an undergrad on a full scholarship, then got paid to attend that IVS as a PhD student.  So students can be aware of these choice and make decisions which are academically and financially sound. I think the ethical obligation that faculty have is to make a good faith effort to keep student costs down.  In this case: yes, I suspect the OP's instructor may not be making such an effort, but without knowing the full situation I am not willing to conclude that the instructor is behaving unethically.

The fee must have been announced and UNDERSTOOD by the student BEFORE they decided to apply to the given university, for to make any difference to the argument.    Putting it into small print that most school kids will not read when deciding on a university is not good enough.

ff524's answer is absolutely great and I wholeheartedly agree with all notions present therein. There is however one approach I would like to additionally highlight: Contacting the student council. This is exactly what the student council should be able to handle. It depends on the institution how much power they hold, but in most it should be enough power to at least raise the issue at a level where the institution will listen. I would not argue that this behaviour is unethical (except if the fee was secret till after the fact, which I assume it is not), however if students have an issue with it than it's the student council who is in place to voice the opinion of the student body as a whole. (If however this is only the case with a single course it's less likely for them to pick it up, but if it's the case with one course it's likely the case with more and at least they might do a survey on the issue)

If your university allows instructors to charge for "materials fees" for classes—such as studio art classes or laboratory classes in the sciences—then it is not, strictly speaking, unethical to insist students access a particular paid resource. However, if such fees are not permitted, then it really is not fair to ask students to pay for quizzes if it would not be required for them to do so elsewhere.
However, although it may strictly speaking be ethical, I would agree with Pete L. Clark that such practices are not desirable. Being completely beholden to someone else's syllabus and teaching materials at the university level is not a good sign, as it shows more the desire to simply get things done rather than doing things well.

I think it is absolutely normal and very common at universities (and elsewhere in education) that you have to buy a specific textbook for your course in order to pass the exam.
Unfortunately, this lead to the bad practice that professors force students to buy their (or their friends') textbooks. I do not think you should blame your professor personally, because it is a very common problem (at least in my environment), and I am sure you will meet this issue thousands of times in your career.
Besides the ethical problems, I think this practice is very dangerous because exams are distorted  in a way that you can easily pass if you have the book. This will motivate even not-very-smart students to buy the book - and so get passed to the next semester and buy the next book as well.
I have no idea how this issue could be solved, but it is present everywhere as far as I know. You have to buy a textbook for your course, that's OK. The professor asks questions from the textbook on the exam, that's OK again. I don't see how you could get your point through in this case.
We have a similar situation in a law's school, where books are actualized each year upon some minor changes in the law. On the exams, these "new laws" are always asked in order to force students to buy the new book each year, despite that it is 99% the same as last year.
It's been an issue for years, and it is a law's school where you would expect students to be able to find some legal way against this practice, but so far, they couldn't.

@BenCrowell: I understood the OP. Buying the online material can be considered as buying the "whole" book, or another book, or whatever. The point is that you have to buy something to learn from for the exam. The question is what and why you have to buy.

It's not like buying a book. In your example, it's like telling the law students to buy the book to get the material for the exam, and also requiring them to pay a separate fee to be allowed to take the exam.

The University has a duty to provide all books that are required in the university library in the way that is reasonable for all students to access.     It is optional for a student to buy a book, a student can choose to buy books so they are able study in a location of their choosing.

@Ian: Print textbook reserve service is traditionally provided by many, if not all, university libraries. However, I'm unaware of any evidence that it's actually a duty. I would assume it's just a tradition. There are good arguments for abolishing the tradition, but I don't know of any schools which have actually abolished it. Library reserve textbooks can come in handy while students are waiting for their online orders of print textbooks to arrive in the mail.

So the professor is not willing to do his/her job, and instead makes the student pay money to a 3rd party for what the professor has already been paid to provide.
I expect a course to be self contained and the professor to cover everything that is needed to pass the exams.     It is OK to require books to be used, only if they are provided in the university library in the way that is reasonable for all students to access.
I see this as a professor that is too lazy to set their own tests.    If a student did the same, they will be expelled for copying someone else’s work.

Again:  Library textbook reserve service is a problematic service.  Please see my comment above.

Something I don't see being mentioned much is the issue that while this learning kit is critical to being able to get any points on the quiz component of the grade, it doesn't at all guarantee success in taking them, or certainly the non-online major tests (other than the presumably small component described as quoting the text).
In other words, a necessary but not sufficient condition.
This puts it much more in the camp of "a class that happens to have an expensive textbook cost," of which there is no shortage among faculty who seem to be bragging that they would never use this sort of non-print resource (or at least this provider of it), and absolutely separates it from the numerous straw-man comparisons of a "bought and paid for" grade. To sum up, it's not at all unethical to require students to pay an (even if viewed as extravagant) amount in exchange for the right to work a sheet of assessment questions and receive a grade for it. That's called tuition. That's called student fees. That's called textbooks. There is, at present, no accredited university that awards grades without expectation of a student having paid something to earn that right.

It's legal, and probably also ethical.
The professor might be an underpaid and overworked adjunct, who lacks the time to write their own quizzes.  (Is it ethical for schools to hire so many adjuncts, and to pay them so poorly?  I'm not sure.)
Forcing students to pay ~$50 or more helps provide extra money to the textbook publisher, which can then spend the money on making a better textbook.  And on making resources for the instructor:  quizzes, PowerPoint slides, videos, and more.
Yes, yes, you can possibly finesse your way through the quizzes with Ctrl+F.  You might learn something along the way (or you might not).
Some students might do the quizzes without Ctrl+F.  They'll study the chapter, then write some or all of the quiz from memory.  These students might actually benefit from studying each week's chapter each week, in a timely and unhurried manner, instead of just cramming ten chapters in the few days before the exam.  Plus, answering the quiz questions will help to strengthen and reinforce their memories of the textbook concepts.  Their quiz marks might end up lower, but their exam marks might end up higher.
Edit
Is there anything I can do to improve this answer?  If it's wrong, why is it wrong?  Please leave a comment.

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text:
A student in my course does well on exams, but doesn't do the homework: Go easy on them, or make them "pay the price?"
I have a student in my course that does well on the exams, and his answers to the exam questions show a deep understanding of the material. However, this student has not been handing in the assigned homeworks and has a missed a few lab assignments, as well. I've been told by other faculty that he has a job which keeps him up late, and have noticed that he struggles to stay awake at times during the class.
Depending on how he fares on a project worth a large portion of his grade, and the final exam, the missed homeworks/labs could cause his grade to be below a C, which is the required grade that a student must receive if they are to advance to the second, more advanced course. (Also, a C grade is also needed to get credit for the course. Otherwise, the student will need to retake it again on the next offering, which isn't until two semesters from now.) Further, this student is a senior, so a D grade would be a major setback for him.
For those of you who have been in this situation before as an instructor, my question:

Have you ever passed/failed a student like the one described above? If so, do you regret your decision? Why or why not?

Comments are not for extended discussion; this conversation has been moved to chat.

As an instructor, when I find myself in this situation, I invite the student to make an appointment to speak with me privately in my office.
During that private meeting, I will discuss his/her current performance in the class, and point out the likely consequences if he/she does not submit the required work.  I will advise the student as to what he/she must do to achieve the grade he/she needs.
Then it's up to the student to earn the grade he/she wants - or to fail. You can't live their lives for them.

Given that the point of the course is to develop understanding of the material, I (personally) would be a fan of offloading some of the weight of the work onto the exam. I took a course once where the work was entirely optional, and not completing it would mean the exam and mid-term would be worth 100% of your final grade.

@Chris Sure, that may be possible in some courses. In other courses (I am in electrical engineering), part of demonstrating mastery of course material involves showing that you can use the material in a realistic context - project and lab work - not just in exams, which are somewhat artificial.

In addition, if the student is really having a hard time for reasons outside of school, a meeting like this gives them a chance to ask the professor for help and be directed to resources that can alleviate some of their problems.

@Chris 'I took a course once...' The vast majority of my courses were 100% final exam. That's what I call normal.

@ff524 I teach lab-oriented courses about electronic instrumentation and, in the past, about sensors and sensor signal conditioning, where students had to design, as homework, conditioning circuits for various type of sensors and then test them in the lab. I usually don't ask the students to write reports about their designs and lab experiences, but I tell them: do your designs, come to lab and try to understand as much as possible, because during the oral part of the exam I will probably ask you questions about those designs, and if you can't answer you'll lose marks. Moreover, (cont'd)

in the written part, I would ask them to do small designs or circuit analyses that would be much more difficult if they hadn't done their homework properly.

Is not the purpose of education to ensure your students know the knowledge you present them. Closed book exams in class then it places the highest demands generally imposed in undergraduate classes (consider homework, take home quizzes, and lab work). If your student preforms well on the most difficult tasks you present them why would you penalize them for failing to do the easier tasks.

@user3730788 "Closed book exams in class then it places the highest demands generally imposed in undergraduate classes" - not in my classes.

For most papers, can't you (the student) opt to be graded 100% on the final exam? Or is that only if you have attempted all the coursework, which this student hasn't seemingly.

@ff524 I was suggesting that you ask yourself the question, "[d]oes student X know the material and have the skills expected/required".

"Is not the purpose of education to ensure your students know the knowledge you present them." not exactly, at least not in more practical subjects. The purpose is to ensure that they know it, understand it and can apply it.

Without additional requirements such as "the grading policy of the university allows no flexibility in such cases", I think this is exactly the sort of advice that makes universities bad places for a number of very capable people who would greatly benefit society if they were allowed to take advantage of structured educational resources with a little less mindless adherence to rules.  There are plenty of ways to allow for the occasional special case without penalizing anyone (e.g. out-of-curve grading).

@PeterGreen And I would add that it's hardly a good attitude to culture in yourself.  Imagine doing this at your job: "I didn't do the work you told me to do, boss, but I completely understand it all."  Knowing how to put in the time and effort to do what is requested of you is an important life skill.  You're not setting yourself up well for later in life if you approach your education with a "I know it, therefore I shouldn't have to do anything I'm asked to do" type of attitude--even if you get straight A's (which is possible, whereas acting this way with your boss won't go over as easily).

Work is 'required' only as an instructional tool. If said student has a "deep understandng" of the material, and assuming what the course is aiming for is understanding rather than, say, acquiring a practical skill like writing software or building something - then I don't see why there should be any consequences.

A particular concern - it's easy to argue "you can't live their lives for them".  However, we should be careful that the rules we set don't disadvantage certain students.  If I'm coming from a poor background and need to have a job just to go to college (or help pay my parents' bills), should I really be getting lower grades than the trust fund kid who has never needed a job and doesn't know the material as well as I do?  A potential employer may make a decision between us based on these grades.  On the other hand, if I've got a job so I can afford big parties...

I strongly recommend you start with whatever the policy is in your syllabus. Most syllabi contain details about grading, points allocation, etc. By starting here, you can avoid any claims of "unique treatment", given that everyone received the same instructions.
That said, it sounds as though your student has a unique personal situation causing him to have difficulty completing all the material. In that case, I would follow the advice of ff524 and meet with the student privately to discuss. Simply bring the issue up and see what the student says. A comment of "I don't need to do your stupid homework, I'm good enough at the material without it" may deserve a different reaction than "I would love to do it but I simply don't have time with my other responsibilities".

As an instructor, there isn't much you can do with "I would love to do it but I simply don't have time," except perhaps to offer some time management advice (or advise the student to drop the class, if that's still possible.)

@ff524 - Personally, if I could be convinced that the student really had time management issues, I would consider waiving part or all of the homework requirement. The student is clearly learning the material, which is the overall goal anyways; if they're succeeding, why fail them on a technicality?

If the homework is a "technicality," why are you making the other students do it? If completing the homework isn't really necessary for demonstrating mastery of the course material, then you need to rethink your grading scheme. (And/or your homework.)

@eykanal If a student hands in completed homework assignments, and completes exams, and the overall grade would be passing, but discussions with the student reveal that they really don't understand the material (maybe they got lucky on assignments and exams), should they fail (since they don't actually grasp the material) or pass on a technicality (they completed homework assignments and exams), too?

@ff524 In my opinion homework is to teach the students the material, while the exams check whether (and how well) they've mastered it. To be exceedingly hyperbolic: Do you really think the goal of a course isn't to learn the taught material, but to demonstrate that you can jump through bureaucratic hoops?  I've seen courses where homework was voluntary (you could earn bonus points though). We're dealing with adults - fostering some personal responsibility strikes me as one of the most valuable things you can learn in university.

@ff524 - I've seen many teachers assign homework to force students to practice the material. Others have it as a core requirement, as part of the learning process itself. It really depends on the teacher and the teaching method.

@Voo  If your grade weights homework highly enough that not doing the homework can destroy your grade, then yes, your course is grading the students ability to jump through bureaucratic hoops primarily, with learning put in a distant second place. Personal responsibility is great, but why should a lack of it make a grade which dishonestly says 'the student did not learn the material'?

@otakucode: Just to play devil's advocate - a major part of an undergrad education (in the U.S. at least) is also ensuring that students have some measure of personal responsibility and maturity as they enter the workforce.  So homework may be a "bureaucratic hoop to jump through", but isn't a significant portion of life (taxes/bills/the DMV) a "bureaucratic hoop to jump through"?  I agree that homework should first and foremost reinforce the material - but I also see a secondary use as being a means of teaching "if you don't follow through on responsibilities, bad things can happen".

@eykanal I see. I use homework and lab work so that students can demonstrate that they can apply the material to problems that aren't feasible in an exam setting. In that case, waiving the requirement isn't a good idea, since that student never has the chance to demonstrate mastery of the course material. If the only purpose of an assignment is to get students to practice the material, I don't grade it (I just warn them that if they don't do it, they'll probably fail the exam.)

@tonysdg That's interesting, because over here I've heard the opposite argument: We should make homework voluntary and students should be grown up enough to decide whether or not they need to do it in order to learn the material. "Learn the material one way or another - how you do it is your responsibility - but if you don't use the offered learning material (homework) then don't whine about it if you fail the exam."

@Sumyrda I've both heard that argument and had classes designed that way in the U.S., too. It works well for classes like math, chemistry, or some CS theory classes, IMO. The students are adults and should be able to figure out whether they need the homework or not. On the other hand, like ff524 mentioned, in many engineering classes, the projects are really the only way to demonstrate that you've actually mastered the material (and, IMO, probably really the only way to master it in the first place.)

@Sumyrda For engineering in particular, having only theory courses with no practical experience usually doesn't produce good engineers (and, of course, the reverse usually doesn't either.)

@reirab Agreed. Your argument also holds for chemistry classes with a lab portion or math/cs classes which require programming. It's for the instructor to decide which way is better for their class. But they should make a conscious decision about it and not just go with mandatory homework by default.

@ff524 In some contexts I can tell you (anecdotally) that completing homework is not equivalent to understanding/mastering the material. In my French and Japanese classes, I put homework on the back-burner because it's worth a minimal part of the grade and I work two jobs so it's hard to keep up with the 2-4 hours per night of work. However, I do fine on the exams and am not failing to master the languages. Of course doing the homework would help, but it's not necessary.

Please, please do not base your grade on your perception of the student's attitude. It's very easy for someone who doesn't give a flying f@& about your class to butter you up. It's also very easy for somebody who's going through a hard time to be rough around the edges.* The first quote you mentioned actually presents the bigger opportunity to make an impact on the student. Give them the benefit of the doubt. Ask if there's anything going on outside of school— maybe you can connect them with resources that can help.  Invite them to office hours. A little kindness can go a long way.

I'm not trying to tell you what to do or imply that you're doing anything wrong.  Your thinking is perfectly natural and most educators feel that way.  But the teacher who will always stick in my memory is one who replied to a comment very much like your first quote with kindness.  She used her lunch break to tutor me a bit in chemistry.  It made  such a difference.  It's making me tear up just thinking about it.

Talk to the Student now
If possible you should communicate to the student exactly the precarious position they are in.  Presumably this student is capable of completing the assignments and labs just like other students in the course.  From the sounds of it, even doing an average to below-average job on these would substantially reduce the odds of a very negative outcome.
At that point the burden is on the student.  You cannot make changes to the weighting of grades because of the external circumstances: this would really not be fair to other students. Presumably you have some notion of the percentage weights the various graded assignments are worth.  Explain this, and make it clear that excellent performance on exams is simply not enough.
Of course, I would feel bad giving a D or lower to a student in this situation, but the grade must reflect the student's performance in the course as a whole.  It is unethical to give a student a grade other than the one their coursework has earned.

I would like to add that other students may have the opposite problem: They are putting in a lot of work for the homework, but are not doing well on exams (for whatever reason). It would be unfair to shift the scoring in their un-favor, if it was specified before (most drastically, they may have chosen a course over others because of the focus on homework).

@mafu It is however possible to accommodate both ends of the spectrum by giving indirect homework incentives, instead of or in addition to direct incentives (i.e., graded assignments). For example, you could allow students who fulfill all or most of their homework assignments to redo their exam once -- by which I mean: once more than those who didn't do enough of their homework. Or perhaps allow them more time on their exams. With perks like these, students who don't have or make time to do all the homework still have the opportunity to get a 100% score -- it will just be a little harder!

@mafu if they do all the homework, but they're still incompetent at the end  (unable to pass exams/demonstrate mastery), shouldn't their grade indicate that they don't actually understand the subject?

When it comes to workforce performance what correlates best Exams or Homework?I put this as a comment and not a question because I would like people to think about this .

I had a professor that instituted a "flex" grading system (for all students) to cover this contingency.
There were three aspects of the course: 1) homework 2) hourly exams, and 3) the final, weighted 1/3, 1/3, 1/3.
But if some student did markedly better or worse on one aspect of the course, the professor would re-weight the grades 40% for the best aspect, 25% for the worst aspect, and 35% for the middle one. That way, each part of the course would have a minimum weight of 25% and a maximum weight of 40%, but students with skewed grades were given a benefit compared to the 1/3, 1/3, 1/3.
The professor's experience was that the "re-weighting" rarely changed anyones' grade, but might for the odd student. I was that odd student.

The problem with this is that it's a whole lot of wasted time for the professor for so little benefit. It's generally not a calculation that you can automate in a classroom management package, for example. If I were advising the professor, I would definitely recommend putting that time into something more productive. (This is what I meant by "running different case what-ifs" in my answer.)

@DanielR.Collins it is trivial to implement such a scheme in Excel or other spreadsheet. If you don't know how, ask for administrative support from your department and I'm sure they'll help you figure it out. Not saying you should use such a grading system, but the technical difficulty shouldn't be a factor in your decision.

@Dan Romik: In my experience, most instructors who do this kind of Rube Goldberg grading aren't doing it with technology. And the point stands that it's not automatible in most classroom management software.

@DanielR.Collins these software suites usually have a function enabling download/upload of grades. At my institution many instructors would download the raw grading data, process it in Excel to compute final scores, and upload the final grades into the system. Is it slightly more work? Maybe (actually sometimes the opposite, as grading software is a pain to use and setting up your own spreadsheet makes things more transparent and minimizes the chance of errors). Is it sufficiently hard and time-consuming for your "waste of time" argument to make sense? I don't think so.

@Dan Romik: Of course, that process would need to be repeated multiple times over the course of a semester to keep grades updated. In my case, it would have to be done at least once a week for each of 4 classes (instead of the management software just keeping it updated live automatically).

@DanielR.Collins No, it doesn't need doing each week. It needs doing once at the end of term. A student doesn't have a grade for a course until they have completed the course.

@DanielR.Collins: Basically, the professor wouldn't re-do the calculation unless a student asked him, after having presumably done it himself. But it was a safety net.  (In my case, the grades were so obviously skewed (90% for the final, 85% for hourlies, 60% for homework) that he did it on his own. And gave me a B- instead of a C+.

@Jessica B: At our institution, "keeping students informed as to their progress" is a major component of our observations and evaluations, it's appreciated by students, and I think it's good practice. Using the classroom management software their current grades are always automatically updated and accessible 24/7.

@DanielR.Collins If my students want to know where they stand, I tell them to work it out. They know what they've got for all the marked work, so they are just as capable of doing the calculation as I am.

@DanielR.Collins Many course management systems do support such things (Blackboard and Canvas both do).

@Henry: To my knowledge that's not correct. If you could point to some documentation as to how Blackboard can handle conditional weighting as specified by Tom Au's post above, it would be appreciated.

@DanielR.Collins: The documentation here http://library.blackboard.com/ref/36ba3329-e441-488a-93ce-7a55543cc999/Content/Grade%20Center/Calculating%20Grades.htm#calculating_grades describes how to create a calculated column which is the maximum of several other columns.

@Henery: Thanks for that. To be clear, it can't directly handle the conditional weighting, you'd need to make 3! = 6 separate columns for all the possible weightings and then take the maximum across them, correct?

@DanielR.Collins - "My tech sucks so bad I can't calculate a simple maximum" is a really poor excuse for not giving a student the credit that one would otherwise say they deserve.  What limits the ability to select an "ideal" grade should be measuring how well a student has mastered the material (which is inherently tricky), not primary school mathematics.

We forget the KISS principle at our peril. link

Kudos to you for wanting to find a way for a talented and hard-working but over-extended student to succeed.
What is the right measure of whether the student is mastering the material in a way that supports the follow-on classes?  Ideally, you will design your syllabus so that the student's grade will appropriately reflect their level of mastery.  In some courses, there is no real mastery without lab mastery.  In others, textbook-based conceptual mastery would suffice.  They are many reasons why the grade contract on your syllabus might be incorrectly formulated.  E.g., you might be weighting homework heavily because that is the only reasonable way to get pass rates appropriate to your institution.  That is, sadly enough, sometimes it is unavoidable to reward effort instead of mastery.  You say the student shows "deep understanding", and if by that you mean that he will be well prepared for the follow-on courses, you might propose a fair replacement for the grade contract on your syllabus.  Make sure you would be comfortable offering every other student the same option.  Then consider whether the grade contract on the syllabus should be altered to include this option.  If yes, then you have probably found a good solution.
One strategy I use in courses where the final exam provides a comprehensive test of appropriate mastery is to give an A grade to anyone who gets an A on the final.  (Of course, this is inappropriate in many courses.)  Perhaps this offers a helpful starting point for dealing with this student.

+1 for the alternative grading scheme. Actually, most of the classes I took as an undergrad worked that way, but you had to at least pass the homework as well (get 50% right).

There are many answers already, but let me give one that applies in France (hoping I am not the only French around here).
First, Universities usually have special attendance waivers for students who work aside their studies. Students have to declare this early to make university able to accommodate them, but it is always a good thing to let them know they should disclose their situation to the person in charge. Note that some otherwise mandatory requirement can be waived (e.g. some homework, some in-class evaluations) but that some cannot (e.g. practical work in experimental sciences are usually too important a part of the curriculum to be waived).
Second, the grading system is often only loosely defined, which makes one able to adapt it to the case. One should of course always be as fair and as precise as possible, to make the grade really reflect what it should measure.
Third, even if the grading scheme has been precisely established and cannot be changed at all, the end-of-year jury has complete power of changing grades. Be sure to attend it so that the student's case is treated appropriately. Short of that, make sure the case is known to all colleagues.

While it is important to try to be "consistent" with grades, I think we can mostly agree that the point of courses is to educate, rather than demanding compliance to (admittedly artificial, even if self-consistent) rules. If the situation described comes up in the middle of the term, it's awkward to accommodate, because suddenly declaring that students have the option of having their grade determined by just exams could be objected-to on the grounds that if they'd known that, they might not have done the other work... Hard to argue with this, even if we imagine that the intention of homework and labs is to help learn the material, etc.
In the past, I have bent my own rules and given grades based on performance on the final. By this time, I would arrange things so that I'd have less reason to do so... Altogether, out of perhaps 100 such cases in 40 years, I can recall at most 1 or 2 where students were genuinely successful in learning the material while being somewhat disconnected. So, in fact, although some students half-heartedly complained that they'd have not done the homework if they'd been allowed-to, not "allowing" it did them a favor.
So, I have no regrets at bending the rules for a few, although I was not happy that in 98 percent of cases this bending didn't save them.
So, by now, my default for undergrad courses is to "require" homework + for exceptions see me at the beginning of the term, not part-way through... explaining that changing things in the middle easily leads to unfairness... I do give examples of plausible exceptions (about skipping homework, especially, about missing a midterm, ... how can I demand that people not go ski-ing at Thanksgiving?...)
Summary: the goal is education, but/and a significant fraction of students will dis-serve themselves through naivete... But/and I no longer can stomach arguing that enforcement of artificial rules "makes sense". I strongly prefer more defensible positions. :)

What if the intent of labs and homeworks is not just for students to learn the material, but for students to demonstrate that they can effectively use the material on types of problems that are not feasible in the context of an exam?

@ff524, yes, I agree that there is the possibility that you mention, of course.  But/and not only might this be un-obvious to the students, but not truly innate to the subject matter... so I would feel it necessary to make such a distinction, about the goals, very, very clear at the outset, so that no one could plausibly imagine that "a good grade on the final" could possibly reflect the desired competence. That is, the true goals, whatever their reasonable testing-ground, could be made clear. Competence is competence, with or without obedience-to-rules.

@ff524: Such cases ought not to be referred to as "homework", but "projects".  Students recognize the difference, and won't expect projects to be optional or minimally weighted.

bravo, @paulgarrett.  Excellent argument.

Stick to your syllabus.
That doesn't mean you're out of options though. Talk to the student and determine a minimum number of assignments that the student must complete in order to reach that C. Concentrate on balancing assignments that the student can complete, with assignments that you feel are especially important.
My school has a similar grade requirement for meeting the prerequisite for advanced classes, although a student will get credit for the current class with a D. When faced with similar situations I have on occasion recommended students be accepted despite their lower than typical grade. That has had mixed results, bending the rules too much for a student will not do them any favors.

First of all, let's dispense with the fantasy-world argument about the ethics of grading fairness and all that claptrap...The student's grade is the student's grade, and no other student has any standing to discuss it or even notice it, much less complain about it.  "Objective" grading is a starting point. No more, no less.
Having said that, I have opened the door to the fact that any grade given is purely at the discretion of the professor, and that doesn't mean it is completely arbitrary:  there should be some discernible qualification or justification for a grade that diverges from an "objective" grade.
Of course, any individual Professor's criterion for adjusting a grade will ultimately be subject to review and revision by the department chair and/or dean or even provost...so let's just dispense with that here and consider it assumed.
I think the breakpoint is whether the situation is chronic or episodic. My personal feeling is that a student isn't going to school to get through part-time work...They're doing part-time work to get through school.  Their coursework is, as far as I care about, thier primary concern.  With this notion, I am less inclined to give chronic absentee/no homework situations a "pass" but reserve the ability to be lenient in the here-and-there odd situations where "life happens."

as I suspected, many academicians HATE the idea that grades are anything but God's Own Truth.  Downvoters, go nuts!

+1 for "The student's grade is the student's grade, and no other student has any standing to discuss it or even notice it, much less complain about it." There should be no notion of a zero-sum game in academia. If a fellow student managed to get a better grade, be happy for him.

Hmm. As long as the students will be compared by prospective employers or grad schools on the basis of grades (and they will be unless you teach at the kind of place that is as much social club and finishing school as university) then the other students certainly do have an interest in what their peers make. Now, you could take the view that you are assigning a more correct grade by allowing a variation. But you need to think carefully about that: how many other students are fighting through comparable circumstances and doing it better than this student. Why are you cheating them?

@LLlAMnYP, yeah!  favoritism, discrimination, nepotism, so what.  If the professor gave another student a better grade for worse scores that's the way it goes.  Just be happy for him.

@8bitwide Yes, pretty much so. It's a shame that you can't get it as good, as the "teacher's pet", but merely the fact that someone got a better grade isn't taking anything from me. Where I studied, dropping out of uni for a male student often meant getting drafted by the military. Finishing a semester without Cs meant getting a stipend for the next 6 months. Whistleblowing on a cheater could hurt the cheater, but certainly would not make your own stipend bigger. So yeah, be happy for the guy if he managed to get what he needs. (PS - employers don't give shit about grades).

@LLlAMnYP I see two problems with this mindset: (1) Many professors grade "on a curve", so there is a very real statistical sense in which other students' lower grades helps your own; and (2) one could easily discriminate against a particular student by giving everyone else a bonus. The student can't complain because the prof is following his own guideline, but particularly if this is in a context where "the curve" is the expectation, this may as well have the effect of lowering that one person's grade unfairly.

@Mario if the curve is real, you may have a point. In my alma mater the "curve" was the exception. As an aside, when I was supervising and grading a lab course, I also disregarded the average level of the students. Instead I discussed with the prof, what they should know and graded solely on whether they know it or not. Most grades came out quite low.

@LLlAMnYP In undergrad I recall hearing some horror stories where in OChem the class average was close to 30%. The school likes different classes to have comparable grading scales, so as a result they had a heavy curve in those classes to bring the average back to 75%.

@MarioCarneiro this discussion started about the unfairness of going easy on someone who doesn't turn in homework, but it's even more unfair, that my grade can depend on other students. Apart from that, when the curve is heavy, a grade doesn't tell anything about knowledge of  the subject, but just compares an individual to the average.

@LLlAMnYP, I feel like grading does (and should) have an objective quality.  It can't be "I'm giving you an A because you performed to the very best of YOUR ability."  That would render grading almost useless as a pedagogical tool.  Or at the very least, grades would mean something very different than what we understand them to be today.

@LLlAMnYP, the gist of my argument is that different areas and disciplines can't be lumped all together under one rubric.  I can definitely see a particular 500-level sciences course, in which some very deterministic material is simply being learned by rote, would not be well-served by a grading system that was in any way ad-hoc.  However, how about a 700 level modern poetry class?  it's not outlandish to imagine a student turning in a brief poem or haiku that is so utterly brilliant that they get an A in the course, in spite of being scholastically deficient in certain other requirements

@dwoz I find, that you're making a "truism" here, so I'm really not sure, what point you're trying to make. In any case, never did I insist that grading be effort-based, no. Above I simply mentioned, that the concept of a grading curve is bad for most kinds of objective assessments, except for making the university look not too bad when a weak group of students take a particularly difficult course. But the curve is then unfair to the outliers, especially if they're surrounded by very high-performing peers.

@dwoz Also, I imagine, you are referring to the American educational system? I say that, as I am utterly unfamiliar with terms such as 500-level, 700-level, etc, so I may be missing some points. Anyway, back to the subject of the curve and the subject of the initial discussion. I graduated in Moscow (studying physics), where picking courses was not an option. You picked, after two years of general courses, a department, and this choice determined your program for the next 3.5 years. Except for the physics courses, where (cont'd)

@dwoz ...the lab course was an extremely important prerequisite to be even admitted to the end-of-semester exam (and I believe, this is the case where ff524's claim, multiply repeated here, is especially valid), there was usually some homework or similar assignments given during the semester, but they did not influence the grade. Usually they could influence admission to the exam, but once admitted, it was solely the exam that determined the grade. Also they could influence the professor's attitude towards you. (cont'd)

@dwoz It was very often the case, that I'd slack off during the semester, but still perform well in the exam. That's fine. Sometimes, the prof would have a high opinion of me for hard work during the semester and the exam would go easier. That's not exactly objective, but I welcomed that. Other times, I would feel particularly bitter, that the professor would award high grades to students that demonstrated busywork during the semester, but clearly did not know their stuff on the day of the exam, while telling me "you've been slacking, so I won't hear what you have to say, here's a C".

@dwoz The point I'm trying to make with the above example, is that the system was such designed in Moscow, that the exam was the gauge of a student's knowledge, while classwork often did not represent things accurately. As a result, I came out of there with an opinion, that classwork is for the students to facilitate learning, but the final judge should always be the exam, and it's somewhat unfair, if you're nonetheless judged by your classwork.

Depending on whether your academic rules at your institution allow this flexibility, you can offer the student to do what at least two of my professors did during my undergraduate days:

Talk to the student first to ensure that they really understand the material.
Offer them to simply take the tests and the final test as 100% of their grade. Maybe ask to solve a couple of randomly selected homework problems too.
In the interest of fairness, offer the same option to all students in the class who qualify (based on already-passed test grades). If they feel that they really know the material excellently enough not to bother doing the homework, prove it to you in an brief oral exam combined. If they perform as well, they get the same waiver.

This way:

You ensure that the students you graduate from your class truly reflect the level of knowledge you wish to impart to them
You don't penalize students who know their stuff (because they are just extra smart, or because this is old material for them) by making them do make-work which doesn't enhance their knowledge or understanding because the homework in class isn't intended to evaluate the student's knowledge but to help them gain that understanding.
You don't treat anyone specially due to their "special circumstances".

Remember, your goal is to (1) teach the material; (2) teach to learn. It's not to make students complete 100% of their homework because the homework, like Everest, is there.

+1 for allowing the student to be graded by demonstrating his command of the subject matter in a way which convinces you of that fact, rather than by adhering to anything else.

In my experience, if a students final mark works out to be just short of a passing grade It is common for teachers to round up the grade if they think the student has an adequate understanding of the material.
In some cases this has involved meeting the student after the final exam and going over the test with them to get a better understanding of the students depth of understanding. Some answers on a test may look good, but it could just be that the student has seen a similar problem before and has a good memory - but are not capable of elaborating on their answer. In this way you can get a better sense of the students actual proficiency with the material and decide based on that to pass or fail.
The whole purpose of homework is to help prepare the student for midterms and finals - and retain that knowledge. So if they can accomplish that without the homework and have an above average understanding of the material I don't think it makes sense for them to fail the class. This is probably one reason why university level courses often have finals worth 50% of the grade, whereas homework accounts for maybe 10%.

The relative percentages of exams and homework vary greatly from one school to another, and even one professor to another at the same school.

"The whole purpose of homework is to help prepare the student for midterms and finals" - not in my class. Homework and lab work is a chance to get students to apply material in a way that isn't practical in the context of an exam.

What do you wish a grade in your class to mean?  If you ignore the missing homework, a good grade in your class will indicate that a student has a strong grasp of the material and a high level of skill in solving the sorts of problems which you put on your tests within time limits.  If you penalize the missing homework enough to make excellent test performance alone inadequate to obtain the good grade, a good grade in your class will not reflect the students ability to utilize their knowledge of the material to solve problems under time constraints.  They may still have a good grasp of the material, or they might not.  If they get a poor grade, they may still have a good grasp of the material, or they might not.  The homework-penalizing grading will, however, reflect a degree of subservience and submission to discipline even in situations where the homework has little to no benefit to the students knowledge.

Why do you assume that homework has no benefit outside of the strict material on tests?  The more open-ended time for homework often increased its value, in my experience.

@jakebeal: Not for many students, who copy their answers off the internet.

@user21820 Then that is poorly designed homework.

@jakebeal: I agree that there are ways to design homework to lessen that problem, but with websites like Math SE around, no math homework is immune from the problem since often the proofs from good students are very similar too. I've personally observed many students doing just that, and for these students homework doesn't improve their understanding at all.

Most of the reason for even having homework is to force the students to actually study and learn the material so the professor is not lecturing to a bunch of blank faces. That is what is required for the overwhelming majority of students to keep them on task and not have them procrastinate on learning. The homework is also a way to give "free" points to the students grades to make up for not doing well on the exam. In actuality, if one were to look at the "ideal" situation, the OP's student is exactly that. A student who learns what is needed when it is needed. Why punish the student for that?

@Dunk Yes. Regarding trying to force students, having seen non-authoritarian teaching results, I suspect that the authoritarian games are what cause most of the problems in the first place.

The last part of your question is a poll and is not kosher for this site, but I will offer my point of view about your basic dilemma.
The old-fashioned way of grading put a great deal of weight on the exam(s).  In a lab course, this would include a lab exam.
Over time, we started to become more humane, and reduce the pressure about the exam performance, by giving more weight to other components.
If you feel that your exams are well enough designed that a solid exam performance sufficiently permits a student to demonstrate mastery of the material, and if you are confident about your exam proctoring procedures, then be humane.  Be flexible.  Celebrate his mastery of your course material by giving this student a well-deserved A.

In my alma mater, which was also where I taught for a several years, the academic studies bylaws explicitly stated that the course grade is intended to reflect the student's command of the subject matter. Assuming the subject matter is not the practical skill of writing code or building something, the "deep understanding" OP has discerned would be enough to give the student an excellent grade. There are rules, and there are higher-level rules (the "constitutional level" if you will). So, actually, sticking to some formula in the syllabus against one's better judgement would be mis-grading that student and, theoretically (but not practically) grounds for him/her to complain...

This is a good answer. In other contexts, what you describe can be compared with the Rule according to higher law. That is, while statutes and case law are very important to a well-functioning, consistent, and fair legal system, there are some times where things just break down and require human intervention from people with a thorough understanding of fundamental rights and fairness.

As others have said: default to the syllabus grading scheme to the letter. Diverging from this sends you down a sinkhole of making more modifications on the fly, trying to be fair to all students, running different case what-ifs, and generally doing a lot more work.
Given enough heads-up (again, as others said), I have specified a bare-minimum number of assignments that a student has to turn in to get a passing grade.
Also consider the appropriateness of an "Incomplete" grade. Although I almost never do it, if there is truly a unique situation that you want to account for, consider withholding the grade until the student passes in some bare-minimum work after the fact. A downside of this is that it does create more work for you (scheduling and following up), but in theory that grade status is designed to account for that.

It is imperative that you design your grading system to take this type of situation into account.  Some students simply will not get the homework done, even if they understand the material.  The reason is not really your concern (unless of course it's something like a medical or family emergency).  In my courses, I always instituted a way for students to avoid zeros on homework.  For instance, I would allow them to make up late work for up to a week, though at only a fraction of the value.  If it was past a week, I would offer them additional work (e.g. writing a paper, or doing a special project or lab) to make up some points.  However, I stress that this policy must be written in your syllabus so that grading remains fair to all students.

I studied at a high-level British university where papers should be turned in some time before the end of the year. I wrote more and much better papers than I ever had, and I enjoyed them and was actually interested in practically all of them, instead of (at rule-based American universities) staying up all night and forcing myself to do what was required on time.

One system that could accommodate students who master the test material but don't do the homework, would be to have test scores above a certain level, waive the homework requirements, and/or have the grade for the homework for a unit equal the test grade if the test grade is higher than the homework grade. Typical grading formulae are pretty crude and introduce artificial stress (unless your goal is to teach game theory and how to beat arbitrary rating systems).

@Dronz I agree, but whatever you do it needs to be clear in the syllabus so that there is fair treatment for all students

My approach in this kind of situation has been to follow my syllabus and grading process to the letter. Students who earn Fs, even those who need a passing grade to advance, get Fs. If they need a heads up to see this coming, then it's definitely worth pulling them aside and telling them. It really can change their approach.

It can also result in grades in your class being near meaningless. For instance, in junior high school I had an algebra class. I got straight As on the tests. I did well on the homework. The teacher, however, defined half of the grade be based upon keeping all returned homework and tests in a folder. I was not good with organization, and had basically no such folder at the end of term. His intention was to fail me, but I luckily successfully argued that organizational skills were not even taught by him, so weighting them so heavily was petty and counterproductive to education.

@otakucode: I would call that an example of having a bad grading schema, which is a different (albeit important) issue. The solution is to fix the grading schema to something worthwhile.

Everyone should take notice that I didn't comment on OP's choice of what counts for what. I've always figured that anyone who can ace the exams and turns in a few of the homeworks should be able to to get an A.

One way out would be to announce to the class that you would be giving out a difficult optional assignment that anyone can attempt for bonus credit of say 20%, and at the same time inform that student privately that you are doing this for his sake but such that it is still fair to all, and so he had better submit the optional assignment if he didn't want to get a poor grade.
The first advantage is that it is fair to all students and yet rewarding those who have a much deeper mastery of the subject. You should of course mark the assignment impartially and try to prevent any cheating, and it will naturally give extra credit to the better students.
The second advantage is that it does not penalize any students at all, since it is purely bonus credit. So no student will have any reason to complain, since the good students can prove that they deserve a good grade.
The third advantage is that you do not have to rely on your subjective and possibly inaccurate judgement of this student's abilities. It may be bad to give good students an 'undeserving' poor grade, but it would be even worse to give bad students a truly undeserving better grade than there is clear evidence for (unless you are absolutely certain that your student's performance on the exam is so outstanding that all your colleagues will agree fully with you).
Note that I'm purposely not answering the question of whether to pass or fail the student involved, since according to the above we can only answer that question after the optional assignment deadline.

This is common in my department.

@Nemo: That's nice. I myself do it but not as a last-minute resort but right from the beginning. But I've never seen or heard of such practices in my university's mathematics department, which is a pity.

Your syllabus has, or should have, a formula used to calculate the students' grades.  This student is making a choice, based upon what he or she understands that formula to be, not to do the homework.  Every student should be able to look at the grade formula, figure out what grade they can accept, weigh that against their goals and the time demands of their other courses and pursuits, and determine what they want to hand in.
Of course, doing the homework should help the student to generate an understanding of the topics in the course, and thus help the student do better on exams and major assignments.  It could also help a student recognize red flags for a lack of understanding that merits extra attention.  If the homework doesn't play such a role, or some other similar role, then it's just busy work, and you need to ask why its being assigned in the first place.
You should view the grade as a pre-established contract with the student put forth in the syllabus.  If the student can abide by it, they stay in the course, and if they find they can't, they're free to make other plans.  The fact that you're wrestling with this decision now seems to signal that you haven't clearly established this contract.  Use this situation as an experience to sharpen your grade formula in the future such that a student in this situation would get the grade you feel is deserved, but for this semester you need to stick to whatever formula you conveyed.  If you haven't conveyed a formula, do what you think is right, but it is WRONG to place students in a situation where they don't understand what generates their grade and you should certainly fix this for future iterations.
How much should homeworks count?  My own personal feeling is that if it counts too much, it just encourages academic dishonesty.  It should count enough that poor homework performance should certainly rule out an A, just to encourage students to do it.

I disagree vehemently with your first sentence. Grading is an inherently subjective task, and I always made sure to keep my syllabi loose enough to allow me to assign sensible grades. In particular, I think that setting percentage thresholds for letter grades and trying to design exams to fit them is absurd. I made up exams that tested what I wanted to test and then interpreted the results.

@Brian that is what curves are for.  You can't go changing a term paper that accounts for 10% of grade to 30% or homework that counts 5% to 20% because the grades don't work out the way you want them to.

I’d never ever have assigned a figure like 5% in the first place: it’s too small and too precise. My syllabi ran to descriptions more like this for courses in which there were too many students for me to bleed copious comments over weekly homeworki: There will be three midterms and a final. The midterms will count approximately equally, and the final will be worth approximately two midterms.

Convert assignment to exam. Just explain the student that not everything can be verified in exam, that some kinds of performance, understanding can only be seen from assignment results, so assignment marks influence the exam marks.
As the student is doing exams well, he will do the assignments well also now, because they are part of the exam. Currently he probably does not think it is necessary.

You should discuss an alternative scheme for the homework problems for this student. Just tell the student that the way things are going now is not acceptable, he'll not get the credits for the course. If he tells you that he'll try harder, tell him that you actually know why he isn't doing well on the assignments, that he is going to fail the course and may also become ill due to overwork and then risk dropping out of university altogether.
Then offer him an alternative scheme for the assignments that is more compatible with his schedule,  but which also comes with zero tolerance for not adhering to it. You should aim for assignments for him that are at least as hard as the regular assignments. You should tell in class that some students are following an alternative scheme for assignments to accommodate for private issues, that this is open to everyone, but the assignments are on average a bit harder than the regular assignments. This makes sure all students are treated equally, and that the alternative scheme is not an easy pass so the floodgates for the alternative scheme are not opened.

One follow-up question I wold ask is whether the exam in question is as rigorous as the OP suggests; the student may indeed have known the material well (or known it already from past exposure), but if it required very little practice to master the skills needed to excel at a summative assessment, how powerful a measure could it possibly be? My students often ask me for a final exam whose grade could trump the rest of the semester (probably because they got that "Senior Day" treatment in high school), but I ask them two question which quickly snuff out the requests:

Would you be satisfied if your exam results dipped and thus brought your A down to a C, "just because" you got a 79.8% on the exam?
Are you prepared for an exam genuinely testing every major "essential" ("irreplaceable") concept we have discussed, and not this "gentler" one I have prepared in acknowledgement that you have already showed me a partial mastery based on your earlier exams? ("'Cause I could always make this final exam a lot more challenging....)

After reflecting on it after the semester ended, I'm fairly certain that the student had prior exposure to the material, which was not the case for a majority of students who were in that particular class. The student in question passed this particular course, but failed the follow-on course [I suppose he did not have as much prior exposure to the material covered in the follow-on course].

I know what you want to do.  You want to give them a break.  BUT, you established grading standards for the entire class.  It would be unfair to treat this student differently from the rest.  And you can be penalized for doing so.  If you don't want to enforce your own standard, then you should create a new one for the next class.  But you must enforce the one you established for this class.

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Is it possible to work from my parents' home on a postdoc?
I have a postdoc (in mathematics) lasting for less than 8 months. In the UK, at the area of the university, I find it difficult to find accommodation since no one wants to let to me for such a short period of time, which is very annoying.
I was thinking I could live with my parents, and visit my adviser once a week or so. The journey would be about 3 hours each way. And we could Skype.
As a PhD student, this would have been acceptable, but I wonder if it is different since I am now a member of staff. Is it frowned upon? Will it cause problems for the department (eg. desk space) or for myself due to tax purposes? It's an EPSRC funded grant, so I wonder if that may also be an issue.

Have you looked for a room on gumtree or spareroom? I don't know about your city, but 8 months is considered long-term in London.

@qsp spareroom I have tried, anything decent gets snapped up before I can arrange a viewing. I'm in the Midlands. Will look at gumtree.

What field are you in?

@Bitwise Maths.

Have you asked your department/university if they have any housing available on campus?  Some places have living quarters on or near campus specifically for (scientific) researchers, and even if not they may have other housing available.

@C_Al It is entirely dependent on the department - when I started my PhD I was told there was a relaxed atmosphere (in the old building) and the key thing was getting the work done... - fast forward a year after we settled into the new building (open plan with an open atrium across 3 floors + ground floor...) and we were getting chasers about office hours... work didn't matter, appearance did... -> So there is no hard and fast rule other than "you just have to ask and discuss/negotiate". Having said that, it should be a lot easier with theoretical work compared to practical work.

@C_Al And a PS: Its called working from home - no matter what/whose home. You could be renting a flat and find it impossible to move due to conditions etc. - doesn't matter that it is your parents home.

Also check out Foxtons in the area of London you want to live. Of the proper-estate-agents they're the only ones that I've found doing cheap (by London standards) <1 year term flats.

As a PhD student, this would have been acceptable - where? (Certainly it's not a standard; and while in some industries remote work is acceptable/common, I couldn't persuade my advisor; nor I know people who did their PhD that way.)

What might be frowned upon is if you don't give money to your parents to help out as they would be putting a roof over your head, feeding you and for some people, even clothing you...

Do British rental agreements typically have a minimum time? Perhaps you can just rent somewhere "long-term" and simply give notice at the end. (In some countries even fixed-term rental agreements must have an "escape clause" if you get a job in a different city, which you might be able to use)

This really sounds like a question you should be asking your adviser.  The overwhelming consensus here could be "yes" and your adviser could still say "no".  Likewise, the overwhelming consensus here could be "no" and your adviser may yet say "yes".

not sure how that works in the UK, but I tend to never tell the landlord how long I intent to stay. (would it only be because I don't really know it myself.)

"no one wants to let to me for such a short period of time" In the UK, a standard rental contract (known as an "assured shorthold tenancy") is either 6 or 12 months so there should be no difficulty obtaining a place for 8 months. My feeling is that you're not looking in the right places.

@DavidRicherby 6 months, really? I'd have said 12 is standard. I think the estate agents have a lot of demand from tenants who want 12+ months.

@Joseph hmm, I don't think people would frown at me for that. Many parents would refuse such payment anyway.

Only your school and your department and your group can tell you what their expectations are. Ask them.
But face-to-face networking with others is hugely valuable both for your current tasks and for being aware of new opportunities,, and think carefully before you give that up. I've been working from home for about 5 years now (commercial, not academic), and it has definitely cost me in terms of career progress despite my making deliberate efforts to stay in the loop.

I did a certain amount of telecommuting between 2005 and 2012. That was possible because a non-trivial fraction of my work was strictly computer based.
Several notable problems needed to be addressed before it worked well:

You need the permissions and support of your boss (and hopefully high levels as well).
Sufficient bandwidth. I'm in Big Science (tm) and that involves some videoconferencing more weeks than not (and sometimes a lot) and occasional transfers of large data sets. Depending on where you live you may need to upgrade to business quality service to have sufficient bandwidth, and that wasn't cheep. You may also need to upgrade some kit on your computer.
I needed an office space with a door and the agreement of others present not to be coming in and out and asking me to help them out with "just one little thing". You have to be able to give it full attention just like you do at the office. And then you need to get out of that office space when you are off work.
You need to have arrangements to be able to go in off your usual schedule if something comes up. And your boss's agreement to think carefully about what things that come up actually justify that.
You need all your collaborators who might want to contact you to have the right contact information. I consider email the preferred means of communication, so that wasn't a big deal except when I was sitting remote shifts (and I just ended up giving people my personal mobile number).
You may need to adjust some of your computer based work-flow. Even with high bandwidth you'll probably experience more latency and more lost connections if working remotely on computers at the office. Using the wrong tools in that environment is tolerable for short spurts, but no good day in and day out. Switch to the right tools. Because I'm in a unix environment and use emacs that meant getting off my duff and learning screen and starting to use tramp for file access in the editor.

What field were you working in?? I'm in math, so I cannot imagine your some of your bandwidth-based concerns. All I need is Skype to run, and LaTeX and emails.

I'm an experimental particle physicist. And in truth, the really big data stays on the cluster or grid, but 'small' abstracted data collections can still be an appreciable fraction of a gigabyte. However, the biggest bandwidth demand was multiparty videoconferencing.

@C_Al There are mathematicians that make (prodigious) use of computers, as well.  It's not standard, certainly, but there are a number of research areas where extensive number crunching, modeling, and data simulations are common.  A concurrent student of my advisor was looking to use university supercomputers to expand their thesis beyond what their desktop could do, but ultimately it was determined the problem wouldn't benefit much from parallelization.  I've had it suggested that I get time on university supercomputers, as well; I was able to do without.  And we're both pure mathematicians.

@dmckee I have used remote access with my university - and to be honest, for Skype & remote work, i.e. VNC or RDP you don't need that much bandwidth, RDP especially is extremely efficient. (It does require some little Windows-Box on campus though.) Relatively standard European internet access is fine - at home its a 4MBit/s conenction with 1MBit/s up and that is more than sufficient. I was even running RDP (via a VPN) via my mobile when we had some landline issues.

What does "sitting remote shifts" mean? Also *ahem*\ boss's :)

@Lightning Experiments need monitoring. Often 24/7.  This is called "sitting shift" even if you have to walk around a lot Sufficiently mature experiments provide resources for some of that monitoring to be done remotely.

@DetlevCM Well, if your bandwidth is up to your needs then it is sufficient. It was not only a concern, but a non-trivial expense for me on two different jobs partially because I lived in a rural area where even the "expanded" consumer service was pretty slow.

I find that connecting remotely to the cluster containing the terabytes I need, is almost as fast as connecting from work to the same cluster.

@gerrit If your research involves shuffling about terabytes then working from home is simply not appropriate for you - or anybody else with such data needs. Although even shuffling around GBs was a chore at my university... (100MBit/s LAN only...) - I suffered a bit when I my program write 30GB or so on a departmental Linux machine...
However, most jobs will be in the MB range to set up and possibly 10s to 100s of megabytes to get the results - it is normally temporary files that can be huge. But then again, compression is your friend when you do have larger files.

@DetlevCM My point was:  When I am at work, I log on to the cluster located 40 km away.  When I am at home, I log on to the same cluster 45 km away.  In both cases, my workstation lacks both the storage space and the processing power required.  It's true that I could copy a small amount of data over to my local machine, but I don't see the benefit in doing so.

@gerrit Indeed - and I just reread your original comment... duh... silly me. Indeed - and for that remote connection you don't need that much bandwidth. (Latency is actually more important.)

That seems more like a question about internal policy of your academic institution, and not about academia per se.
Telecommuting is seen as a lessen form of working for some people. "Real" work is performed only on-site. And Skype won't change this situation. The rationale behind this is not just a question of being used to other forms of work, but there are reasons to be against telecommuting, and this might be your department's policy. It's annoying not be able to talk in person, and you are forcing others to adapt to your schedule, since no one wants to re-schedule a meeting with you at the last minute, if you had to travel 3 hours to be there. It's also difficult to be sure the person is really working on the project, if he's far away. That can lead to disgusting surprises. So, do no wonder if your adviser is against this.
On the more practical side, I doubt you can't find any place to crash, no matter what part of the UK you are talking about. There is always Airbnb, or people who need to sublet their room. And this applies to London, and to university towns as well, where landlords might prefer a long-term student to have a tenant for the next years.

I really don't mind when my co-workers work remotely. I think it depends on individual preferences and the kind of tasks to be performed. There are more advanced collaboration tools than Skype (e.g. Cisco WebEx, Adobe Connect, etc.).

People shouldn't be rescheduling a meeting at the last minute whether I'm working remotely or not. If they're getting snotty about working remotely breaking their ability to be so careless and undisciplined, that's their fault! Thank goodness they can no longer do that, if they are the sort of people who don't understand the damage they do when they get away with such actions. (Sadly, as a remote worker, I regardless get this problem all the time with conference calls and it's insanely frustrating.)

"It's also difficult to be sure the person is really working on the project" Not really, not substantially more than if they're three doors down. Note that this is a generic response — I'm not making any judgements either way about the pros/cons of remote work in this particular situation. I can imagine that people's misconceptions about doing it (e.g. what I quoted at the beginning of this comment!) may alone be more than enough to make it not worthwhile.

@LightnessRacesinOrbit: the reasons for being against remote workers can be real or imaginary. But they are still there. I would not be surprises if many departments are systematically against it.

@PierreB: Indeed; nor I

In addition to other observations made in other answers, I'd add, based on my own experience commuting (pre-internet) from Boston to New Haven, CT, that this completely disconnected me from people at Yale... although many were sympathetic and offered various helps, in those times! ... but, mercifully, I had been "in-house" for a year previous, so it was not professionally tragic. In hindsight, it was anti-helpful commuting like that, but the established rapport saved me... though I certainly did not understand such dynamics at the time. It would have been subtly disastrous to try to commute from Boston all along... though they would have allowed it... which I'd imagine would be an institutionalized version of incomprehension of the human element... sigh...
One "subtle" (until one thinks about human beings) point is that even if you can "objectively" take care of prescribed business, and even if people think well of it, they won't know you, and will find it (even if only subliminally) difficult to say that they see that you have a good vision for the future. That is, "commuting" without prior rapport will (I'd worry) severely attenuate letters-of-recommendation toward The Next Job.
Again, in hindsight, I'd think it might be worth risking some net loss to be in very intense contact with one's postdoc institution, "for future gain". That is, unlike my own (and, I gather, many others' continuing) delusions that some dispassionate judgement of one's work is all that matters, in fact one's affect "in the moment" greatly conditions senior peoples' appraisal of one's potential. Note: at least in mathematics, although there is pretense of objectivity about publication record, the real issue is about "future contribution". Yes, a bit correlated with "past contribution", but very weakly so (duh) for youngish people, and when one examines the dynamics of introspection...
So, whatever one thinks about conventional status-gate-keeping, the odds are very high that one should "be in close touch" with one's postdoc environment, regardless of the wonderfulness of one's work.

It can be very helpful to attend seminars and chat with people over lunch, coffee or a snack.
Rents are so much more affordable when you are sharing with one or more people.
In many cities, there are ways of advertising online that you are looking for a housemate or a house to share.
There's also the bulletin board approach.
You might want to consider doing some private tutoring to bring in some extra money.
If you end up renting something a bit run down, small or depressing, you can always take a few days or a week or two here and there to go work from your folks' place.

+1 for the "discussions can be helpful" - during my PhD time (submitted now, waiting for the viva), my major issue was that I did not have anybody to properly discuss the topic in depth with for most of the time during which work was done. While having people to discuss thing with will seem redundant as long as things work, they become essential the moment you get stuck or seek a new angle. Also, opinions can sometimes be very helpful.

In the post doc phase, you can afford to be a bit less single-minded than when you were doing your PhD; since you aren't weighed down by teaching responsibilities yet, you can spend some time collecting ideas for possible future projects (seminars, chit chat, etc.).  Plus, as a post doc, you are a valuable role model and potential mentor for grad students.

This might work in maths, but you should

Check university-provided accomodation for stretches of a week or 2 especially at the beginning.  This is more likely when the undergrads are away but some universities do have rooms for visiting researchers (as @zibadawatimmy says).  It would cost you but hopefully not stupid amounts.
If not, or availability is poor, you should bank on spending quite a bit of your money on hotels or similar while you get things up and running -- go for youth hostels/backpacker stuff and work on campus perhaps.
This will only work with your PI's enthusiastic support -- the school's support is probably required as well, though for 8 months you could probably do this unofficially; it can take months to find somewhere to live.
Most cities have cheaper places within a decent train ride and main-line stations are often quite near universities -- do you need always-on connections or could you work on a train?

In my experience, living 3hrs away from your post-doc institution is not that uncommon. It's often a result of a two-body problem. I know of someone who actually spent a large part of a post-doc on a different continent (but I don't advise that). If anything, I'd think the university have less reason to restrict you as a postdoc than as a student. If you want to live far away, you should be prepared to make the journey fairly frequently (of course at a minimum so as to fulfill any duties that are required of you, but preferably well above that).
However, I would agree with comments that others have made that it's not really clear that living at your parents' would be a good choice. It is unlikely you cannot find anywhere to rent for 8 months. It may be that the local policy is to take the lease for the year and find someone to pass it on to later, or possibly you've only been looking at places that are aimed at students.

But the rents I'm getting at around £700-800 per month, which is quite high since I'll be getting paid around £28k a year (before tax).  So signing on for a year is risky if I can't find anyone.

It's usually cheaper to join a house-share (I don't know if that's what you're quoting, but given the number I'm guessing not). Of course it's your call, but personally I would say the emotional cost of living with your parents as an adult can be high.

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