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Why do some instructors care so much about attendance?
It seems that in higher education, some instructors either do not care at all whether students attend, and others care minimally (often resulting in a 1-5% attendance grade or tie-breaker rule).
However there are also many instructors who seem to feel very, very strongly about attendance, and take it upon themselves to enforce this in various ways.
For instance, I was shocked by a recent question claiming that 15% of the grade would be lost for missing 2 lectures - according to the question author, the class meets so frequently that this would constitute missing less than 3% of the lectures! While this seems like an extreme case, it seems like it's not uncommon to find professors who may deduct 10% or so for missing a small fraction of lectures.
Why are these professors so preoccupied with making students attend? If attendance is so crucial to doing well in the class, wouldn't the students who don't attend do poorly in the exams anyway? Why additionally punish those students who did not attend, but did well regardless?

Students who don't attend but still do well challenge the professor's EGO.

@BenVoigt; As in my answer, I think a bigger problem is students who don't attend because they think they can still do well, but turn out to be mistaken.  This challenges the institution's retention rate.

"If attendance is so crucial to doing well in the class, wouldn't the students who don't attend do poorly in the exams anyway? " - Yes. And so an "attendance required" policy is at least mildly effective at reducing absences and increasing pass rates, which is something many instructors consider desirable. (Especially in e.g. the context of a community college, vs an elite institution.)

"Professors ego": totally off - I do not mind if students are away from my class, although I work hard to make it informative and interesting. However, I do mind if students complain about difficulty of material, bad marks, etc. and they haven't attended. They have been forgoing some essential component of the course, and it's someone's else fault?

It's just another way to trouble the students.

@CaptainEmacs  -- I don't even care too much about the bad marks and griping.  I care more if the habitually absent show up to office hours asking for an explanation for something they would understand if they went to class.

@BenVoigt It has little to do with the instructor's ego and more to do with students that don't bother attending lecture and show up in the office hours immediately prior to an exam expecting the prof to spoon-feed the material to them.

"If attendance is so crucial to doing well in the class, wouldn't the students who don't attend do poorly in the exams anyway?" Maybe, maybe not. There are some things that can't be measured well on exams, and if the professor makes an effort to teach those things in class, what else can they do?

@BenV - In the (hopefully extreme) case of the brilliant student who is unfortunately stuck in the lecture hall of a mediocre professor who does little more than read the bullets off his slides or parrot the book, you may have a point. However, when I see empty chairs in my classroom, more often than not, the absent students are lazy idlers rather than savants. They rarely crack open the book they paid good money for, and don't seem to mind forfeiting the education they are paying for, either, for the sake of a little extra sleep or a bit more video game time. Egos run in both directions.

@ff524 This makes less sense now with lecture recordings available. I used to listen to recordings only and did well in many subjects despite not attending a single class physically for those subjects.

There was a relevant question at Professor only teaches what is already in textbook. Should I quit going to the lectures? which may provide some insight.

@J.R.: Sure, and I do not mean to suggest that all professors who care about attendance are doing so for egotistical reasons.  Merely the ones who do so by explicitly reducing the course grade for absence, when there are so many better ways to engage students and get them into class.

@CaptainEmacs: By your own statement "I do not mind if students are away from my class" you are not in the group of professors my comment concerns.

In our experience here it is very unlikely for any student who regularly attends the lecture to fail the exam, even if they are not putting more effort into it. Just a case of "subliminal learning" I guess. I survived two lectures I did not like by doing the exercise sheets for one of them while passively listening to the other. I passed both, without having the feeling that I put extra effort in either.

FWIW, at my (German) CS-department, there is not a single course with forced attendance. (Exercise sessions are different sometimes, if rarely.) This is a question of (learning) culture: do you expect your students to be mature enough (before or after they graduate)?

That 3% figure is closer to 5% if one takes into account schools that are based on the quarter system. Also if the student was taking a foreign language class, I can understand that kind of requirement.  Students who take a beginner level foreign language class because they already know that particular language are wasting everybody's time. It's a good idea to dissuade such students from taking your course in the first place (even if by the end of the course, you don't end up enforcing the lowering of their grade).

And finally, a foreign language is also a good example of a subject where you can do very well during the final written exam, but be absolutely horrible when it comes to understanding and conversing in that particular language. Another good example is a physical education class. When I took a course on resistance training (weight lifting), the course had such a long waiting list of students wanting to get in, it made sense that the instructor wanted to dissuade the students who took that class less seriously from wanting to enroll in it.

As a rule of thumb, the stricter the attendance rule the more worthless the class.

I don't take attendance, but it really chaps me when a student doesn't come to class and then expects me to reteach 4 weeks of material to them in office hours. That's a no from me dawg.

I don't take attendance. Unfortunately, students who want to drop my course after the official deadline need my permission, and on that web form I have to say when the student last participated in the class. Sometimes I can make a good guess on the basis of homework or exams, but other times I (briefly) wish I had taken attendance.

One theory is that it serves as additional motivation for students to attend class, which in turn helps increase their success in the course.  It gives them a short-term incentive to do something which is hopefully also in their long-term best interest.

If attendance is so crucial to doing well in the class, wouldn't the students who don't attend do poorly in the exams anyway?

In many cases the instructor has found from experience that this is true.  But the student (who has less experience) may not be as convinced.
Consider a student who wakes up in the morning and doesn't feel like going to class.  In a class with no explicit attendance requirement, the student may rationalize: "I will just study harder tomorrow to learn the material that I missed, and I'll still be able to do well on the exam, so skipping class will have no consequences."  But they overestimate their ability to do that, and end up not learning it as well.  Or tomorrow they put off the studying until the next day, and so on, and fall behind.  As an eventual result, they do not do well on the exam.
In a class with an attendance requirement, the student knows for sure that not attending class will have negative consequences.  The biggest consequence (failing the exam) is very likely but not guaranteed, and the student may not be able to impartially evaluate just how likely it is.  But loss of attendance points is guaranteed.  So the student cannot pretend that skipping class is harmless.  Thus the student is more likely to actually attend, which is in their long-term best interest anyway.
Hopefully, the ultimate result is that a higher percentage of students are able to meet the standards of the class.  The flip side is that some students who have good attendance but poor performance otherwise may get better grades than they "deserve", but the instructor may feel that this tradeoff is justified.

You don't need to penalize poor attendance explicitly, you just need to make the explanation clear.  Putting something in the syllabus about "There are no points assigned to attendance, because there don't need to be.  Exam scores always reveal those who skip class." might get the message across even more convincingly.  Also, the student in the other class is getting 91% on exams despite blowing through the professor's missed class limit, and on my calendars, the semester's only half over.  So clearly attendance isn't so essential as the professor is thinking.

In the end, you could also give easy points for attendance (which will get most students coming to class) without harming those who ARE able to learn in other ways, by including attendance in an overall grade, but giving the option of using the final exam score as the final course grade instead of the overall grade.

@BenVoigt: If you say "always" then every student will know this is a lie.  Obviously there are students who never attend and do fine on exams.  If you say "usually" then it is quite possible that an improbable number of students will think they can be the exceptions.  See the Dunning-Krueger effect.

@BenVoigt: In my opinion, giving the option of using the final exam as the final course grade is a HUGE Dunning-Krueger trap.  Students can say "I'm smart, why waste my time going to class?  I'll just study in the last week and do great on the final, and then none of the other stuff I missed will matter."  And more often than not, they'll be wrong.

For those, there should be the opportunity to test out.  I've met a bare handful of people who would bet on the exam only after being out of school; all my classmates would rather have taken the easier points throughout the semester than have that much riding on the final (especially on a comprehensive final); however the final-replaces-all provides a last chance at redemption and takes away any chance to complain about homeworks being too long or attendance being worth too much.

And honestly, Dunning-Kruger should only be a factor for students who haven't met prerequisites, and the professor does a disservice to the other students if he tailors the course for those lacking the groundwork.

@BenVoigt: Your views differ from my experience in a number of respects.  But ultimately this comment thread isn't the place for a thorough debate, and I am afraid we may just have to agree to disagree.  Feel free to have the last word.

I'll just close by saying that I think other methods for encouraging attendance (covered in some very interesting questions on this site) such as making lectures more interesting, more audience participation, etc. are much better than marking off points for absences.

It's hard for students to know how good your lectures are if they don't show up, though. :-)

Should the teacher really care about how well his "barely-students" perform? If you want to give a warning, make a test early on. If you don't, well... the student can just take the class (or semester, or year...) again. Either they learn from their mistake, or they don't. I'm just thinking of how much time and effort is wasted rearing people who should already be adults, in theory. Sure, it is an extra incentive - but is it really worth it?

@Luaan: It's a fair philosophical question: is the purpose of a university to deliver education only to those already strongly motivated to participate in it, or is it appropriate to encourage or gently coerce participation by students who might not do so on their own?  I'll just say that in US academia, the rates of retention and timely graduation are generally viewed as an important measure of quality for an institution.  Thus if a student doesn't pass a class, it reflects poorly on the student but also on the institution, program, and instructor.

@Luaan: When evaluating instructors, institutions definitely look at the rate at which students pass or fail their courses.  Therefore, yes, instructors do have an incentive to care about how well all students perform, even those you might classify as "barely students".  (Of course, there are competing incentives to maintain academic standards.)  You could argue that such incentives should not exist, but the fact is that they do.

That's a great point if we assume a private educational system (just for simplicity, not politics). On one side, people want to buy education at an institution that has a high retention rate and short graduation period. On the other side, companies want people with quality education as cheap as possible. Within the quality constraints, retention and short education are a benefit for both parties, and quality becomes a balancing act between making things easier and attracting enough students, and giving companies enough value for their money when hiring your graduate. Business as any other.

This is a non-reason assuming you want to educate mature, self-regulated learners. If class attendance is essential, we have to trust and require that students will figure that out. Extrinsic pressure does not help the long game.

Even though these are terrible reasons, I think this is probably the rationale that a lot of professors use, so +1 for that.

Great answer. The idea that the point of classes is to satisfy the requirements is a damaging and pervasive one. The point of classes is to help the students learn (yes, this is hard to define exactly). Tests, projects, attendance policies, and other requirements are there to help motivate students to learn. The instructor's job is to decide which requirements to impose, based on his or her experience, but all are fair game.

Given how much education costs at least in the US (both public and private), wouldn't you say anyone enrolled in a US university is already strongly motivated ipso facto?

Also, I selected this answer because I think it most directly addresses the misapprehension in my question: That students can be trusted to act rationally with regards to attendance, and that forcing students to attend regardless whether they think it's necessary CAN ultimately be beneficial.

Lots of people in this thread assuming that the point of taking a class is to pass the exam, rather than to gain the education on offer in the class, where the exam is just one of the means this education is provided.

This is coddling and, in this case, detrimental to learning, itself, which is not limited to course material. Yes, it's true that it can potentially hurt student retention rates for universities. If, however, students don't learn to create their own fail safes and always expect some organization to do it for them; this in no way fosters academic independence.

Let me start off by saying that it is very unlikely that attendance requirement is purely to protect the professor's ego, as one comment suggested. Any serious educator would understand that the goal of education is not so that the students become increasingly reliant upon the education system. Rather, the goal is to produce students that are increasingly independent, critical, and confident in their own reasoning. If I were a professor, I would be glad that the student can succeed without my help, rather than the other way around. To punish a student for being able to succeed without the help of lectures is simply contradictory to the goal of education.
With that being said, here are some more plausible reasons:

The class is discussion based. This is quite straightforward: if you
don't attend the class, then you do not learn. The in-class learning
experience cannot be compensated by self-study, and exams may not be
an ideal measure of such experience.
The class meets very infrequently. There are certain classes that meet only once per week. Missing one class means missing a significant amount of work. A related example is science lab requirement. In my undergrad institute missing one lab (without advanced notice) means that you automatically fail the class.
The lectures contain information not otherwise (easily) available. This is more relevant for higher-level classes, where there are no standard textbook and the way the professor teaches the material may be unique. The professor may want to make sure that students attend lectures to get the information they need.
Culture. In some culture regular attendance is associated with deference to the system and/or the lecturer.

One finally note: contrary to what OP stated in the question, it is my personal experience (in the US) that very few professors would deduct a significant amount of points due to a lack of attendance. Instead the focus, if there is any, is usually on participation of class activity (which, of course, can only be fulfilled if you attend the class). What OP have described seems like rare exceptions rather than the rule.

Regarding 4: Is there a culture where class attendance in university is almost always enforced? I also thought that one might view the class grade as a measure of not just knowledge but also discipline. However this cannot be the case if there is no way to look at one's transcript and tell which A's are "attendance withstanding" and which are "in spite of [in]attendance".

@Superbest This seems to be an example: http://baylorlariat.com/2013/12/03/editorial-attendance-policies-can-be-too-strict/

Also to #1, if you don't come to class, you may be injuring your classmates' learning experience, so a punitive penalty is apt.  In the extreme, consider a performance/studio class like theater, choir, or band, but the idea applies for foreign language as well and many courses that use flipped classroom instructional strategies.  If only half the band shows up, what's the point of even having class?  @Superbest at my undergrad, you could tell the difference. A, B, C, D, or F you attended.  An FA (Failure due to absences — 2 weeks missed) you didn't attend.

Is there a difference between "Stroking Someone's Ego" and "Deference"?

@Aron: there is a difference. Stroking someone's ego is purely personal to them, whereas deference acknowledges the standing of the university as a whole, by ostentatiously showing respect to its representatives, the faculty members. Showing deference usually has the effect of stroking the egos of those same people, but it additionally has a purpose to do with the whole institution (and perhaps wider structures/hierarchies: consult your local sociologist for details!).

@SteveJessop sounds like you are saying one is stroking your professor and the other is stroking a building. Other than that everything else seems to be window dressing.

@Aron: if you like, but anyway that is sufficient difference to constitute a different motive in the minds of the people whose "preoccupations" the question is about. Perhaps they are less reductionist than you about what a "university" actually is (they think it is not only a building), but even if they're wrong about what a university is, "my students should ostentatiously show respect for the institution" is different from (albeit in some cases a superset of) "my students should ostentatiously show respect to me".

@guifa: This may well be true in the cases you describe, but in many others the opposite is true: a student who does not want to attend the class, forced to attend it, might impair the learning (and teaching!) experience for everyone else, by being disruptive or otherwise just uninterested in the class.

@tomasz generally, peer pressure takes care of that.  I can honestly say that while I've had many a student not show up and fail, not do group projects, not hand in assignments — that is, the whole gamut of non-participation—, I've only once ever had someone actively disrupt my classroom (and it was so severe, security had to be called).  Students who attend are normally peer-pressured into participating, but attendance is really just a proxy. If non participatory but present, they should be similarly downgraded

@guifa: I'm not talking about severe, active disruption. Even merely sitting there with a dead stare, or reading a book can be bad, as they make it hard to get feedback. Peer pressure won't likely prevent people from quietly talking (I don't think it should), but if you force people to attend, they are more likely to spend lectures talking about completely unrelated matters (including with students who would have paid more attention otherwise).

@guifa: Varies by institution? Where I am I had active "saboteurs" (disruptive, snide comments, making fun of other students for asking sincere questions, calling security for removal) maybe once a semester as long as I allegedly held the attendance requirement. Once I released that, the problem almost entirely went away (literally).

I'd add #5) "they track because they are being tracked"? They get graded too... low attendance reflects badly? And #6) Rumuneration. Aren't some schools remunerated based on head count... low headcount affects the balance sheets.

These are all non-reasons assuming you want to educate mature, self-regulated learners. If class attendance is essential, we have to trust and require that students will figure that out. Extrinsic pressure does not help the long game.

@Raphael, I'm not sure if your assumption holds.  Some see their role as more than just educating a student on the particular subject.   Whether this is considered valid or invalid, I cannot find much fault in a Professor who wants to help his students become mature and self-regulating.

@MichaelJ. Sure, I'm all for that. But forcing them will (on average) not do that. They will yield to the pressure, of course, but release it and they will go back to before. You have to allow them to fail first and then learn -- that's only human. (I'm fully aware that most education systems do not incentivize allowing failure. That's part of the problem.) And yes, we tried that.

Points 1-3 seem irrelevant if the student actually learns or already knows the content. #1 would be relevant if it harmed other students; #2 if this was the only way of demonstrating to the teacher that you knew the content (as opposed to having a final exam or handing in reports).

@raphael citation needed

@Jeff Personal experience. I'm quite sure there's a study somewhere, though. (I can summarily recommend the work by Linda Nilson.)

It has been my experience that only two types of classes ever assign a significant amount of points to attendance.  Classes that can easily be passed without attending. ( ie Music 101 )  where test are multiple choice straight from assigned reading.  Or classes that are so difficult, professors are willing to do anything to keep from failing 95% of students or where they have to pass at least 40% on curve and they prefer that 40% actually know something.  My general rule when at college was to immediately drop any class with an attendance policy that wasn't of the later type.

You said "...the goal is to produce students that are increasingly independent, critical, and confident in their own reasoning."  While true at one time, in the era of microaggressions, safe spaces, trigger warnings, speech codes, and censorship, it doesn't seem to be the goal these days. Today it seems to be "Think as independently as you would like but you have to agree with us on thousands of issues without giving it any critical thought or open discourse at all.  If you to dare think differently than we do, you will be shunned, targeted, harassed, bullied, mocked, insulted and expelled."

@AmaniKilumanga If the already know the content, then why are they taking the class in the first place?

@IanSudbery I don't know. Could be a required credit or something?

So here are some observations from my perspective: I teach at a large, urban, community college. We are open admissions (no starting prerequisites) and the students have many challenges (graduation rate 15-20% in the university at large; ~25% for our own college). I'm very much an outlier in that I'm one of the few faculty who don't want to be tracking attendance closely. I'm constantly trying to understand why other faculty are so adamant about this; and frankly I have yet to receive a super-coherent account of it. But some bits and pieces that I get at times:

Students may be so weak that they are subject to the Dunning-Kruger effect; they have no idea how in trouble they are, or what it takes to remediate their weaknesses. Perhaps they are not in a position to make a rational choice about their academics, and at this point need some enforced guidance in that regard, esp. in a linked-knowledge STEM discipline. (To me, this is the strongest argument, the one that allows me to at least entertain the thought once in a while.)
There may be a legacy/cultural aspect; for example, at our school we are given paper rosters with calendars marked out on them for each class, with the direction to mark it a certain way for attendance every day. I've never seen a contractual/handbook requirement that we do this, but the paperwork says so, and they are required documents to be filed at the end of the semester.
There may be institutional reporting metrics at stake. For example, if a student misses 4 classes (course meets twice a week), then the college lets us drop them from the course, and my department quasi-mandates that we do so. I think part of the reason is that the student then counts as an "unannounced withdrawal", which makes our "failure" statistics look better (to very high-pressure stakeholders higher up in the university administration).
Some instructors may do this to make the course easier. I've heard at least once that an instructor in another department had, say, a 70% grade component based on attendance. That is: a student is not required to perform any work whatsoever; as long as they are physically present, they can pass the class (and thus relieve some amount of pressure on the instructor, I presume).
"Remember, the attendance rosters are legal documents. Years ago there was a student accused of a crime. They were proven innocent because of their being marked in class that day, which counted as an alibi." (I've heard this lore multiple times.)
"Attendance is important to reporting for financial aid; we must confirm that students are attending for certain financial aid requirements." (About 75% of our students get federal/state grants?)
"Don't you think attendance is important? Don't you want students to succeed?"

"I've heard this lore multiple times."  Allow me to dispell some of the ambiguity, so this might possibly be a bit more traceable.  I've had college president Ron Price tell his faculty, in a faculty meeting that I attended (as a member of his faculty), that he experienced that at his school.  I believe he said he did so at the Lancaster (California) location of Charter College, so that would have placed the event at November 2010 - May 2012.  (I'm not suggesting that this is the only case where a student was crafty enough to accomplish this technique, but am providing about just 1 instance)

@TOOGAM: Hmm. When I've heard it, the implication has been at our institution (and also further back then those years?). To me it has the scent of urban myth. At any rate, it seems like a highly suspect/inefficient reason for documenting class attendance every day (i.e., taking time out of class to be parole-officers-in-waiting).

Any college granting 70%(!!) grade component based on attendance should instantly lose its accreditation. What was the name of that institution and department please? It's basically farming us the taxpayer and rewarding warm bodies with a pass for showing up. (Would it graduate a chicken which passed the course? if not, on what basis? I would enroll my chicken and appeal, just to prove the point.)

@smci (I'm guessing your comment is based on the 4th bullet point, not my comment which provides such details.)  Before jumping to that conclusion so quickly, I think it prudent to consider: what course is it?  I remember taking some classes ("physical education", choir, maybe drama, maybe "college study skills" where key criteria involved things like in-class performance and demonstrations of positive attitude.  I wouldn't want to blindly instantly remove accreditation for an entire college without knowing more details.

@smci e.g., Whatcom Community College, "Preparation for the SAT" course, CMSVC 085T -- as I recall, getting a "Pass" only required attending something like 3 out of 7 classes.  At the start of class 2, they took attendance, and then said (to all those who were present), "If you were here last week, the only thing you're required to do, to pass, is to attend one class out of the next 5 weeks."  This is an old example (Spring 1995), but I just present it as an example of the diversity of requirements that can exist.  Use those requested institution/dept names as desired

@DanielR.Collins I wouldn't call the case I'm citing as an "urban myth"; at least not from my perspective, because the person who gave me the info (whom I cited for you) was directly involved.  So this isn't one of those myths that completely lacks any reasonable amount of trace-ability.

@TOOGAM but he clearly said '70% for attendance' not 'for participation'. 'Attendance' simply means showing up: whether sober/high/sleepy/unprepared. If he really meant 'for participation' he should have said that, I agree there are a few courses where that could be justifiable.

@djechlin: I mean academically weak, as in "unskilled" and "incompetent" per the language of Dunning-Kruger's papers: link, link

@djechlin That's not some super technical term. If you perform poorly in an area, then you're weak in that area. There's nothing to criticize here.

@djechlin He pretty much did. They're weak in the area of being students, so they are weak students.

@djechlin, I think this is completely unambiguous, the thought that this might have used the (as I consider it, archaic) meaning of weak as in "of weak character" didn't occur to me, and re-reading it I still can't see how anyone could come to that conclusion: "Weak student" is a phrase every academic I know uses weekly.

Why are these professors so preoccupied with making students attend? If attendance is so crucial to doing well in the class, wouldn't the students who don't attend do poorly in the exams anyway?

I am an instructor who sometimes makes attendance or participation part of the grade.  There are several reasons for this (many of which already appear in other answers).  The main ones are:

I'm at a large state school where most of my students are under-prepared for the class academically (these are math classes and officially meeting the prereqs is very different from knowing the prereqs), and need all the instructional help they can get.
Most of the students are taking the class as a requirement, not because they want to be there.  In addition, many of the students are not super responsible, and benefit from psychological incentives to attend class and keep up with the material.  (The Dunning-Kruger effect is also a concern here.)
The material is cumulative so getting behind makes it harder to catch up, especially for weak students.
We face a lot of pressure from the university to ensure most students do not do poorly in their classes.  In effect, we are blamed for not keeping our students on track.  It's not a matter of, "it's the students' problem, not mine" if they don't pass.
The complete content of a 15-week course cannot be assessed in a few hours of exams throughout the semester.  I want my students to learn and understand more than what's on the exams.

Why additionally punish those students who did not attend, but did well regardless?

The point is not to punish students who did not attend, but to motivate students to attend to give them opportunities to do well in class.  In my experience, very few students who skip most classes do well on the exams.  Personally, I don't usually make attendance worth a lot (except in classes where in-class work/discussion is a crucial part of the class) and I make my grading policy flexible, so I can bump people up for doing well on the final exam, say.  This way, poor attendance, or doing poorly at the beginning of the course does not ruin the student's final grade.

In other words, your job is giving students tools, not tests - it's worth very little if they pass the tests but learn to use no new tools. That said, would you allow a student to be absent if he demonstrated sufficient skill in advance?

@Luaan Probably---in practice, students don't ask.  Anyway, my attendance policies are not so draconian as in the other question.  Usually you get 1 attendance point per class, so missing a couple classes is no big deal.  (OTOH, if the student knows everything in the class before hand, they are in the wrong class.)

Those are also great points :) Though with some classes, we had no option to have a class accepted without actually taking the class - ithose were exceptions, though.

Great explanation. Dunning Kruger is recurrent theme here, and indeed, nobody would care about good students who can pass with excellent grades without attending. However, most think they can, while the reality is exactly the opposite.

Just my 2 cents from being a student at a CSU. I don't know what subject/level of classes you teach, but from my experience, the only classes I was ever required to go to for attendance were for GE's. And as a high performing student being forced to attend lecture was very annoying, as I really had no need to be there. Thus I would simply read, play games on my phone/computer, watch videos, or do homework for other classes at the back of the class. You can force me to be there, but don't expect me to like it, and if you try to force me to pay attention, don't expect that to go well.

Completely agree (I am a lecturer also). Very good students will do well in spite of my performance, and bad students will have bad results no matter what I do. What I have to try to do is that all the others students (who are normally the majority) do well. And for them, attendance requirements do help, even when they think they won't. (And by the way, @ChrisWhite comment should be printed big and set in the banner of the site).

Disclosure: I am a lecturer, and I do care about attendance, however I have only limited experience. I don't enforce attendance, because I don't have leverage to do so (at least not in a way that would not upset students to the point which will hurt my chances further career). But I would very like to follow the example of the professor you mention.
There are several reasons, why the lecturers care about the attendance.
1) Dunning-Kruger effect. Often many students, who are enrolled in a class, are totally unaware of difficulty of a course, appear at introductory class (which is usually less difficult) and start skipping others. Then they start getting a clue in the middle of the semester, when they appear at the lectures, and their only experience is that they do not understand anything (so, then they deduce, the lecturer has to be responsible, since they should understand anything and any time). Because of that experience, they then skip the rest of the lectures and get a blow when they are unable to solve a single task in an exam. Finally, more often than not, they still think that it is not their fault, and if the university grades their staff based on students' feedback, it really becomes a problem of a lecturer.
So, forcing them to start attending at the beginning of the semester may avoid this problem.
2) Insufficient support of the university for keeping the standards from sinking to the bottom. Nobody would care about Dunning Kruger, if a lecturer could flunk everyone who does not satisfy the minimum standard at the test. At many universities you probably cannot grade 80% of the class negative, and then expect to retain your position. Sad but true. It is probably worse in for-profit institutions. So if there is some minimum, yet unspoken target of how many students should be graded with positive grades, then a lecturer will try to ensure that at least this many actually attend the lectures and have chance to pass the exam, so the lecturer can fulfill HIS unofficial quota of how many students must pass.
Not much to do with ego, but a lot to do with experience. Really no problem for me if people do not attend and do well, but then it means that they did not need to take the class anyway.

Well, the simple correct answer is probably this: answers vary.  There are multiple instructors, and with them there may be multiple reasons.
When I was a college instructor, I was told that the college had made certain promises about what the college would do, which included having students physically on the premises for a certain number of hours.  Students who did not show up were hurting the percentages that the college needed to keep high in order to fulfill its obligations.
Edit: adding this paragraph, since I suspect this might not be easily implied by everyone.  Checking attendance and following up with non-attenders, even of a single class session, may be an expected requirement of the job.  For me, they were.  Class sessions were 4+ hours long each, and instructors were even expected to try calling students' cell phones during the first class break, if they didn't attend.  Different instructors, like many types of employees, had different levels of how much they may have fulfilled an individual requirement.  Still, this simply demonstrates that "pressure from above"/administration may be one reason that may influence some instructors.  Attendance was not directly graded (due to some government-related regulation), but there were requirements about how attendance would negatively impact grades under the category of class participation, and attendance could also affect the final grade by impacting additional grade percentages such as in-class quizzes.  Some details may have been simply encouraged at some times, while being requirements at other times, and the simple way to be compliant was to just be strict (resulting in this being a significant requirement on students).  Even in an institution that doesn't have as strictly enforced policies, there may still be requirements, or suggestions (which might be received as requirements), that might have influence on some instructors.  (These influences may come from a certain college president, or department head.)  Such influence might impact many years down the road, even after the instructor is no longer under the same supervisor.
Another reason is that students who don't show up are, well, not attending.  This means that they are basically one step away from dropping out.  (The only step away from being a drop out is not what they do, but how often they are doing it.)
Another reason is that a key purpose of the college education system is to provide the students with the preparation that they will be needing.  As I've read this site, I've learned more and more that the precise goals may vary a bit between different institutions, particularly those that describe themselves as "research institutions" vs. those that describe themselves as "career preparation"/"technical colleges".  Maybe some have some more philosophical/altruistic goals rather than corporate culture.  Regardless, an element that is likely to be quite common is to want people to be successful in the organizations that they join after college.  Most organizations do not want people to be failing to meet attendance requirements.  If students can be exposed to a certain level of expected discipline, such as an official demand of attendance, that may result in certain character building that may serve them well after graduation.
Some argue that final exams would have their grades harmed by students who aren't learning, and so we can just rely on the final exams as a useful, accurate way of measuring knowledge.  The counter-argument is that a student who skips classes may be a good test taker, and may effectively manage to demonstrate knowledge, while not managing to successfully demonstrate the discipline of needing to meet requirements other than just knowledge.  Some employers don't treat the diploma only as a demonstration of accumulated knowledge and understanding of related principles.  Instead, they treat the diploma as a demonstration of students being able to meet whatever requirements were placed on the student, which may involve some life skills (like scheduling) and not just accumulating certain pieces of "head knowledge".  The educational institutions (or individual faculty members within educational institutions) may be choosing to cooperate with such methods.
Again, I refer back to my initial paragraph.  These are simply some reasons, and one or more of them might be part or all of the reasoning that gets used by some instructors, while other instructors may have their own different reasons.  So consider these various arguments as just being a sample, and not as the single clear-cut absolutely-right universal answer that everyone, everywhere, is actually using.

One reason for requiring attendance is for international student visa eligibility.
In the United States, students on F-1 or M-1 student visas must maintain full-time student status in order to stay "in status", i.e. keep their visas valid. Note the emphasis below on attending classes, passing classes, and taking a full course of study (i.e. being a full-time student taking a normal semester's worth of credit hours).

While studying in the United States, both F and M students must:

Attend and pass all your classes. If school is too difficult, speak with your DSO [designated school official] immediately.
If you believe that you will be unable to complete your program by the end date listed on your Form I-20, talk with your DSO about requesting a possible program extension.
You must take a full course of study each term; if you cannot study full-time, contact your DSO immediately.
Do not drop a class without first speaking with your DSO.

In the UK, if the university takes on some responsibility to ensure they are in attendance, it is easier for them to sponsor students for their visa.

You can just sign their paper no matter whether they attended. (Which is technically not okay, but a common solution around bureaucratic BS.)

It's not usually wise to play games with la migra / State Department / Homeland Security bureaucracies in the US. They go after people who they think disrespect them.

Particularly in the early years of university, students are overwhelmed by the freedom of university compared to high school. They can be late, skip classes, even miss the odd assignment, and nobody will take them aside and scold them for it. On top of that, there are parties somewhere every day, and a wealth of social events.
Many people who were A students in high school get overwhelmed by the change in university, and end up not succeeding.
Some professors want to ease this transition, by taking away an element of choice, or at least reminding students that there's a reason to go to class, even if it's not mandatory.
Sure, there are students who will succeed without going to class, and students who will fail even if they do go to class. But many professors weigh this, and see it as worthwhile to "waste" class on these people, which has really very little harm, if it results in others succeeding where they otherwise would not.
At the end of the day, it is very unlikely that someone will fail because they attended class, but far more likely they will fail because they did not.

"which has really very little harm" -- actively wasting time of your best students, maybe even annoying them to the point of disliking the material is "little harm"? I disagree.

@Raphael It's not a waste of their time. Even the best students will still learn in class. Furthermore, in an active learning environment, they will be able to help others learn, which is a win for everyone. The strong student will get stronger by answering questions from others, and finding different ways of explaining the same concept. Plus, sometimes the way material is presented in class is not the same as the book, and the strong student who misses class would have no idea how to fill in that resulting gap in knowledge.

I see a lot of answers here about ensuring that students don't fail, that professors are adhering to university strictures, or that professors don't want to be inundated with idiotic questions from students who skipped class and then ask basic questions that were covered. All of those have merit and may be true, but they are not the reason that I assign a high proportion of my course grade to attendance and participation.
I am an assistant professor at an R1 in the USA. I teach political science. Attendance and participation are weighted very heavily in my class because one of the core skills I focus on teaching is critical thinking. I don't give tests or quizzes. Rather, students are graded on their in-class participation (which demonstrates mastery of the assigned readings and the ability to engage the ideas in those readings) and several written assignments designed to prepare students for policy-oriented jobs "in the real world."
Moreover, while I understand that some people view college courses as simply a means to an end, that is neither my philosophy in teaching nor my goal in providing a class. To my view, class meetings are precisely when the real learning and work gets done. I organize my class so that midterm and final written assignments are an application of the knowledge and skills we covered in class. It is the exchange of ideas in real-time between students and professor that I care about the most. A student who wants to simply write some assignments and submit them without coming to my class misunderstands completely the purpose of my class.
When people treat class attendance as a nuisance, they overlook the important epistemological benefits of being in a classroom setting where questions can be asked in real-time and students can challenge one another and the professor. There's a dynamic element that is lost. This may be different in other fields - I wouldn't know.

How do you grade in-class participation when university classes often have hundreds of students in them? Do you just mark tutorial/practical participation, since they're smaller classes of 20-30 students?

Some instructors do actually care very much about attendance. Others may seem to, but I don't know that they have a personal belief in the importance of attendance as much as they intend to follow the rules set by various college administrators.
While the following too-long story is very much anecdotal, I would like to suggest with the moral to this story that while many instructors are "preoccupied with making students attend," they do not themselves "feel very, very strongly about attendance" despite presenting a front that suggests that they do feel this way. With so many good answers already I'd normally just pass this question by, and this approach is somewhat strange I admit (downvote bait?), but this issue has some personal importance to me.

When I began co-teaching as a graduate student, our English department
had a rule that missing more than three classes would result in
automatic failure in that class. The English department was the only
department with this rule in place from what I understand.
I had studied English as an undergraduate student at the same
university, and the rule had been explained to me in every English
course I had, at least on the syllabus and often vociferously by the instructor. I missed more than three
classes a few times, and would receive warnings, and wouldn't miss any
more, but also wouldn't get kicked.
One of the two professors that I "co-taught" under, who showed me the
ropes in the beginning, was new to the university and the policy, and
I always thought that he was somewhat iron-fisted due to the fact that
he failed several students for missing a 4th day. It bothered me, but
I didn't say anything at the time because I had a rather cowardly
mortal terror of any direct superior at that point in my life and had
been warned by professors as an undergrad that one is very much
supposed to enforce the three-absences-or-less attendance rule.
The next semester, as I began teaching on my own, we ran into each
other and he said:
Why didn't you tell me that nobody actually enforces the attendance
rule?!
When he was enforcing the rule in the presence of the violators he seemed
adamant, even angry, and he seemed to think he was justified in enforcing it; he acted the part of the stereotypical lawful-good paladin, not sadistic but self-righteous. I thought that he
actually felt "very, very strongly about attendance" as you put it.
He
didn't; he was just enforcing policies put in place by administrators
who didn't care about the life-wrecking consequences of policies they themselves wouldn't have to explain face-to-face, who hadn't
even made exceptions for classes that met three times a week vs. two. And he did so with an expression on his face that brooked no argument, but apparently not because he was actually angry; it was a stony, defensive expression, expecting hostility and confrontation.
I taught my final two semesters on my own, and I didn't bother anyone
about attendance, ever, and aside from a few students who failed
themselves out of college through other means everyone kept showing
up, even without the threat of the giant stick of doom.

A. Some profs are evaluated by their management by student
performance.  Non-attendance is not good for performance.
B.1. Most all profs are rightly annoyed by students who ask questions
about topics covered in the missed class.  This wastes the prof's as
well as the other students' time.
B.2. as in B.1, but during the prof's office hours.  It wastes the
prof's time as well as other students waiting outside the prof's
office.  15% seems a bit severe, but whatever it takes to get
recalcitrant students to put on some clothes to get to class...

In Poland, almost 90% professors I've met required attendance on their class (only 2 lectures can be missed and only with good excuse).
I think the main reason behind this behavior was that they often presented expanded material (that wasn't included on the slides or docs) which was required on exams. Some of the professors doesn't provide any materials at all, so without own notes (or copies from others) You just don't have any sources of knowledge to learn from.
Very often lecture topics was really difficult and there was even no sources to learn from in the Internet.

You give a good reason why forced attendance is unnecessary as long as you make the facts clear from the start.

I used to be an assistant professor, and occasionally would have an attendance requirement. The reasons for having such a requirement are as follow:

Students whose attendance is paid for by the military must attend
lectures.
Student athletes must attend lectures to maintain their eligibility, and if applicable scholarships.
In full courses, students who don't attend are dropped so students who can attend may join the course.
The course has a heavy group-work or active component that requires the student to be present. In such a course, a student who chooses not to attend may hurt the educational outcomes of their classmates.
In some cases the student may not be prepared to take the course, for whatever reason, and should drop as soon as possible. If I track their attendance I may have been able to suggest to them that they should drop in time to get at least a partial tuition refund.

Students who do not come to class, for whatever reason, have poorer educational outcomes on average than students who do come to class. Frankly, it's in the interest of a student to come to the class they've paid for.
On a strictly personal note, I don't care to be a convenient excuse. Students who habitually skip class tend to blame their instructors for poor grades, even though their grades are poorer in large part because they pissed away the opportunity that they, or someone else, paid for.

Regarding 1 (and 2 which is very similar): Doesn't the military have a better way of tracking that, other than hoping a professor will decide to take attendance? Or do you mean that it is specifically the military that compels you (through university management) to have the attendance policy? In that case, do they ask you to track attendance only for the military students, or did the university reach "everyone has to attend" as a compromise to avoid special treatment for them?

@Superbest When I was teaching I was routinely queried about military and athletic students. However, in the interest of fair handed treatment I treated all my students the same where reasonable. Depending on the school, and in some cases, the state attendance tracking may be mandatory. There are also issues for public institutions wanting to be sure that the resources they expend on higher education are well spent.  In answer to your question, the military demands that the university track attendance through some sort of process that demands the instructor take attendance.

That's interesting know, I didn't think they were strict about that. Thanks for the explanation!

You give valid reasons for tracking attendance and reacting with reporting resp. reorganizations to absent students. However, I fail to see how they support making attendance mandatory for passing.

At the end of the day if students do poorly, it comes back on the instructor. The fact of the matter is that the average student who shows derives greater benefit from the course. Since the instructor's job is to help the students learn, getting the students to class is part of it. Making it beneficial in a grade sense to attend may motivate people to get to class. Finally, some states require attendance to be part of the grading scheme since the state expects the people benefitting from tax dollars to actually go to class.

Honestly, it's just about making our lives easier. If you never come to class, we expect you'll eventually have a panicking moment where you realize you're far behind, and you need personal help from us to get back on track. Everyone can avoid this unfortunate situation if we just make attendance mandatory. On the other hand, actually keeping track of attendance is a huge hassle, so some of us would prefer not to manage all that. I personally don't take attendance, but I do feel sad when students don't attend. I just don't feel it's my place to police and penalize adult behavior.

At least here in Switzerland there's one more reason (nobody mentioned yet...). The attendance is part of the credits you get for the course. Each point equals roughly 30 hours of work. Some courses have only small exams, then the actual attendance is an important part of these 30 hours. If you don't show up, you didn't do the work expected for that certain number of credit points.
However, I don't care that much as a TA here. Only people regularly being absent are reported. Generally I think they're old enough to know, how to pass their exams.

Being there is not per se work (on that course), so this thinking is clearly broken. (Their fault, of course, not yours.)

@Raphael : I would rather contradict here: You are supposed to be working along like asking questions, discussing, taking notes, etc. Some courses are even evaluated based on your notes (by e.g. writing a journal about what you learnt there). Attending a class is work in my eyes.

You're supposed to, yes. In any case, workload by credit represents all kinds of work, some of them attendance and some of them not. Checking some parts and not others is weird. In the end, the credits say, "this student passed that course which we think takes the average student so many hours to pass with an average grade" (at least that's the EU definition) but not "this student spend this many hours on that topic".

@Raphael : That's absolutely correct. I was always a student who had a very easy time learning my material. So in average I probably worked less than 15 hours for 1 credit (sometimes far less than that) while others had a really hard time making it at all. But the theoretical background is: The attendance is part of the workload for the credits, so you simply have to be there to get those credits.

@PatricHartmann I second this. In the EU-wide system of grading (not sure whether Switzerland is a part of the system) the credits are given for a) attending b) doing your homework c) taking the exam. A lot of professors do not take this seriously, since the students would be upset (they expect that if you take exam you are done), but actually the credit system was designed in that way.

@xmp125a : To an extend, though very confined, it also brings a certain fairness back to the system. Attendance is possible for everyone, whether a good learner or not. However, there is still much to be done outside the lectures where the actual imbalance of the system lies.

My experience is mostly in mathematics, where there often aren't (even at the undergrad level) regular problem sets or exams. Professors want some indication that a student has covered and understood the material, and classroom attendance is a decent proxy for it. I've never run into a math or science class (as opposed to humanities ones as an undergrad) that formally had an attendance component, but it's not like students could skip literally every lecture and still expect an A. I've seen professors try other method of grading with varying degrees of success: having students rotate in writing up and distributing notes to the class, having students do a bit of research and give a brief presentation at the end of the class on a related topic, etc. After a point, though, students are assumed to be there because they want to be there, and they're responsible for handling their own education.
That having been said, as a student, I never found classroom lectures particularly helpful. (I'm distinguishing ordinary lecture-based classes room things like colloquia or random topics classes, which don't have textbooks and are designed to be more participatory). I learned better from textbooks or papers, rarely had questions to ask the professor during the classes themselves (whether because I had more involved questions to ask over email or because I could work out the answer myself), and didn't enjoy the classes (as opposed to the material in them).

@BenCrowell: Also in the US. Your profile lists your area of expertise as nuclear physics. I'm not a physicist myself, but the physics I has studied (mostly high-energy particle physics) did have regular problem sets at every level, for whatever that's worth.

Your experience is definitely... anomalous. I've never heard of that situation (no regular problem sets or exams) in any U.S. undergraduate math program.

" indication that a student has covered and understood the material, and classroom attendance is a decent proxy for it" -- not at all! Being there and doing something completely unrelated to the course is incredibly common. If you want to test coverage and understanding, you have to explicitly test for that.


text:
Does posting a paper on an online forum establish priority?
I have finished writing a paper and am a high school student. Since I'm sure this has no chance of being accepted to arxiv, I want to simply post it on a public forum. (This also has meaning for me because the forum helped me develop in the field where I wrote this paper, and I have friends there.)
My question is: Even if this is a not-that-important paper, imagine hypothetically that someone more prominent (ok, this is highly unrealistic, but just imagine) steals the main result of my paper and publishes it in a renowned journal, or at least somewhere more prestigious than a forum. Would he get credit for the discovery? This seems unlikely since the date I posted it on the forum will show that I came up with it before him.
Note: Although I don't wish to name the exact forum I'm talking about, it's similar to Physics Forums.

arXiv is not peer-reviewed, and papers don't need to be "accepted" - you just need to have an account.

@LuboAntonov: Sorry, on second thoughts I meant I don't want to publish on arxiv because I don't have anyone to endorse me and want to publish it on that forum anyway. Any advice?

Out of two words, pick one: publish, forum. Posting your thoughts on a web forum is not publishing in the academic sense of the word.

@virmaior: Ok, but my question was whether it was a safe thing to do. Or does the fact that it is not officially "publishing" mean that someone else can "publish" (officially) at any time after and end up with priority?

Stealing ideas no matter where they occur is called "plagiarism". Depending on the meaning of the word "can" in question, the answer is either yes someone can take you idea (i.e. plagiarize it) if you post it AND no, it does not matter that this is not a publication as to whether or not they can call "dibbs" on the idea and then claim it was their original idea in the academic world. Because they would be plagiarizing... (if your question is about something outside of academia, I don't have the ability to answer it here).

@virmaior: Thanks, that definitely answers my question, as I wanted to know if posting it in an online forum means I get priority.

If somebody copies your text, then the fact that you posted this text publicly and earlier on the internet (in a location you can't feasibly control, so it won't look like you faked the historical record) will prove that they plagiarized.
It's a little trickier if somebody in inspired by your idea and writes their own paper that doesn't cite yours, since there's no way to distinguish this from independently coming up with the same idea.  It would be unethical to do this, but it could in principle happen.  If you pointed out your prior posting, you would deserve to at least share the credit.  However, people might still downplay your contribution.  "Sure, there was an earlier internet posting outlining the basic idea, but it wasn't nearly as well developed and nobody noticed it since it was posted somewhere obscure.  The real scientific breakthrough occurred when the idea was independently rediscovered, properly understood and worked out, and disseminated to the research community."  You could end up as a footnote, which is still credit but a sort of grudging credit.
I don't expect this will cause any problems.  It's not worrisome unless your ideal is attractive enough to seem worth stealing, while remaining obscure enough that someone could hope to get away with it.  The biggest barrier to intellectual theft is publicity: once enough people know about your idea, anyone who claims to have found it independently will get shot down by someone saying "You may not have known about this, but that's just your own ignorance, since the rest of us know Awesome Academist came up with this idea in 2015.  You should pay more attention to the internet."
Furthermore, if your idea really stays obscure enough that someone could get away with stealing it, then your posting evidently didn't have much impact on the community and you arguably deserve only a footnote's worth of credit.  (People deserve some credit for reaching the goal first, but more credit if they make a bigger contribution by circulating their ideas and influencing the research community.)
I doubt you need to worry about theft, but trying to publish your paper formally could help address this possibility by putting your work before a broader audience.  Anything worth stealing is worth publishing in the first place, so if theft worries you then you should consider publication.

Thank for for this excellent reply! You've given me a lot to think about (especially the last sentence).

@AwesomeAcademist The advice typically given here to people in your situation is that you pass your paper onto someone more senior in the field who you trust. This person can give you feedback on whether it is worth publishing or e.g. endorse you so you can post it on the arXiv.

The only problem I see is with this:

This seems unlikely since the date I posted it on the forum will show that I came up with it before him.

Hypothetically, someone in the future could easily argue that the date shown on the forum post has been faked - it would be even easier for them to argue this if you're friends with the person/people running the forum.
So you need to get some kind of trusted-above-reproach third party to provide an unimpeachable confirmation of the date that you posted it.
One way to do this would be using the Internet Archive's 'Wayback Machine'
http://archive.org/web/

Save Page Now
Capture a web page as it appears now for use as a trusted citation in the future.
  Only available for sites that allow crawlers.
  As it says, it'll only work with sites that allow the IA web-crawler, so test it first with some other page from the same forum, and then once you know it's working post the paper and then get the IA to capture it. That'll prove the date on which you posted it.

Another way to do it would be to get a notary public to certify a document showing the paper, e.g. a printout of the forum post.
(I should add that my knowledge of this kind of thing is based on IP law e.g. patents/copyright rather than academic publication, but still, priority is priority).

There are "trusted timestamp services" which use a combination of digital signing and included a timestamp with the document, as a cryptographically strong method of asserting that something existed unmodified at a particular date/time.  Some of these services are free.  So long as the services private key is never compromised, their public key can be used to verify the authenticity of the timestamp signature.  Some of these services are free.
The only doubt that one might cast on the legitimacy of such a signature, is whether you somehow coerced the signing authority to falsify the date.  So usually you want the service to be run somewhere that anti-fraud laws/regulations would give them credibility.
How much this would stand up in a court of law would probably involve expert witnesses that understand the process and can try and explain it to someone in a court of law.

source: Stack Exchange

license: Creative Commons - Attribution Share-Alike - https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/

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text:
Advisor going over and unhelpfully modifying my presentation structure and slides
At our institute, PhD students carry out presentations on the advance of their projects once a year. The presentations are "internal" in the sense that only undergrads, PhD students and professors of our institute may attend.
I am about to carry out my second such presentation corresponding to my second year progress. For my first presentation (one year ago), my advisor asked for my presentation and called me into his office one day before the presentation and went over it, changing it in a non-trivial way, i.e. deleting slides, changing titles, content, etc. I found most corrections counterproductive or superficial at best. In the end I did not include all corrections, just enough to keep him/her happy.
I was quite frustrated and stressed since the overall tone was "this is terrible", "we are way behind in our project", "this is bad". After the presentation I got very good feedback from professors and colleagues (my advisor is not a professor). Once he saw the feedback, he changed his mind from "this is bad" to "good work, good presentation".
This has also happened a couple of times with other internal presentations at our institute. I am pretty sure this will happen again in the next days.
My questions are:

Is it common for advisors to carry out extensive and minute corrections on the presentation structure and slides of its PhD students?
What is the best way to communicate that I will not follow corrections with which I do not agree?
Or, are PhD students obligated to follow the commands of the advisor?

my advisor is not a professor Would you please explain what's his job title? Research Scientist? Or something else?

@scaaahu I guess he could be called a Research Scientist. I do not know the details, but he has a permanent position. If you are familiar with the German system, he/she is habilitiert, but has no Professorship.

I just changed non-trivially the slides of my student for a seminar that is due in three days. Bad things happen, it's mostly bad timing.

@Keine: You’re referring to a Privat-Dozent? In any case, this has no bearing on the nature of the answer.

@aeismail I agree. I was just clarifying what someone asked.

@scaaahu in the UK, Lecturers teach and supervise projects, but they are not called Professors.

There are simple technical solutions that allow you to avoid unpleasant discussions if you want. Prepare your presentations in LaTeX or export them to pdf format, but do not give your supervisor the source code or editable ppt version. Or simply print the handout for your supervisor and present the talk orally. Collect feedback in a form of comments written over the text. Then go through suggestions and decide, which to take on board and implement, and which not.

I have done that. He/she just asks for the editable version.

The best way to affect change is to provide a logical reason for your advisor not to make changes directly:

I have to deliver the talk based on these slides. If I don’t know what changes you’ve made, it will be very difficult for me to adjust my talk,  particularly if you delete or rearrange slides. Would it be possible for you to give me some suggestions for improvements instead of making the changes yourself?

It’s exactly for that reason that I don’t mess with my students’ slides unless they ask me to edit them, and even then I prefer to provide suggestions except for trivial edits like misspellings and formatting.

Short version: take control, don't give work to be corrected if you do not want it to, but this depends on your advisor so you can try and involve someone else and get a feel for your group.
Long version: I'm afraid the answers depend on your group and its politics. However...

Is it common for advisors to carry out extensive and minute
  corrections on the presentation structure and slides of its PhD
  students?

It is common for - some - advisors to do this. Often, but neither exclusively nor universally, newer advisors (from my observations) take a more micromanaging approach and may even correct their own corrections.

What is the best way to communicate that I will not follow corrections
  with which I do not agree?

Whatever you say runs the risk of your advisor being difficult, but sometimes difficulties have to be overcome.
Your options are, depending on the context,
1) To not give them the presentation in the first place, stating you want to become more independent, this would be the option I would take and then if they disagree you can discuss why.
2) If you want feedback, then you need to get to the point where you are telling your advisor what to do, what is it that they could help clarify? Instead of handing over the presentation to them, you could have a meeting and point out "is this right? How should I say this?" etcetera. This is just as relevant for writing papers.
3) If they demand you give the presentation and make many changes, then you can ignore them or explain you will "take them into account", this will likely annoy them, but again, if your advisor is difficult you may have no choice.
In general, I think you need your advisor to step back...

Or, are PhD students obligated to follow the commands of the advisor?

In principle, it is your PhD. In practice, some advisors are too involved and others are not involved enough. If your advisor is, as it sounds, overly aggressive then one thing you can do is try and involve a coadvisor, someone older who may even be your advisor's mentor. If they are involved in meetings then they may guide your advisor and calm them down. In terms of what is "obligated", technically nothing, but your group might have particularly authoritarian norms, you should discuss with others in your group and get someone else involved if it is an ongoing problem.

Concerning your first question, "Is it common for advisers to carry out extensive and minute corrections ...?": I believe what I do with my students is rather common, at least in mathematics. I don't directly correct anything in their TeX files, but I make comments, either orally during a discussion or in writing on a printout of their document. The comments are of three general sorts. First and most important, correcting any factual errors in what they've written. Second, expository suggestions (e.g., you should define this term because some of the audience might not know it, or you should reverse the order of these two items). Third, correcting typos. I expect (and I believe this expectation has always been met) that the first and third sorts of comments, the corrections, will be incorporated in the document. Comments of the second sort are for the student to think about; some students will do whatever I suggested, and others will do something else (or do nothing) with these comments.
As for "extensive", that depends on what the student wrote; some students need a lot more corrections than others. As for "minute", I do correct whatever typos I notice, and those corrections would usually be minute. Sometimes, though not often, corrections of the first sort might also be minute (e.g., the student wrote "for every real number" where it should be "for every non-zero real number).

I had a PI who did this. I just stopped telling them when I had a presentation and removed the opportunity for them to meddle. I guess this isn't possible for you as they know this talk is coming up!
If they insist on going through it again, you can calmly point out that: you got good feedback from your peers and senior scientists last time; and that, while you appreciate your supervisor helping you, you don't agree with all of their suggestions and will be guided by your own judgement (as that worked well last time).

This is potentially problematic. The relationship, that seems OK for now, could become toxic if the advisor wants to be told about presentation. Moreover, in some fields, like mine, presentations outside the department are coauthored, so you need to show them to your coauthor.

all_licenses: Creative Commons - Attribution Share-Alike - https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/


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Can I submit a non-research "article" on ArXiv?
Can a generic article be published on arXiv? For example, can I publish an article on "Introduction to Linear Algebra," or does it have to be an innovative research paper or preprint?
If not, are there any journals (e.g., open access) that accept "articles" as papers?

The OP seems to be asking about expositions of material taught in basic undergraduate classes, for which the answer is no.  Some expositions of research-oriented topics are acceptable, as discussed in the question @NateEldredge links to.

See Is it possible to upload expository papers to arXiv? .
I have seen linear algebra notes on the arXiv, and also notes on other undergraduate-ish subjects (including some pretty good ones, e.g., http://arxiv.org/abs/1302.6946 and http://arxiv.org/abs/0805.0585 ). I absolutely don't mind them, and I don't think others do (although I would suggest using github for course notes due to the possibility of frequent corrections and updates). Expository papers for nonstandard material definitely fit well on the arXiv, and there are several; e.g., almost every chapter of the Tamari Memorial Festschrift has been posted on the arXiv.


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Do Indian journals represent the quality of Indian universities?
Since I published my first paper in a well-respected journal I receive approx. one time per month an invitation to journals such as Global Journal of Engineering Science and Research Management and International Journal of Engineering Sciences and Management Research.
Interestingly, all those "journals" are from India. Furthermore it is obvious that they are only interested in charging you money for publishing your paper: for instance, the "peer-review" process lasts just 2 days, so in fact they publish all the stuff they receive for money.
Nevertheless, since the Editorial Boards of these Journals also consist of Prof. and Dr. from India and most articles are also from people from India (sometimes also Dr.) I am interested if these journals represent the quality of the Indian education system?

Note that it's not unusual for scam journals to just pick random scholars to list as editors, without even asking their permission. So the people listed are not necessarily involved in the journal, or even aware of its existence.

Scammers appear in all nations, I'm afraid.  In addition to the Indian predatory publishers, I receive lots of spam from Chinese, German, and American predatory publishers, plus I'm sure from many other nations that just aren't coming to mind.  Just as I wouldn't judge American scholarship from the spam I get from American publishers, or from the diploma mills that operate there, so I would not judge Indian scholarship by the fraudsters of India.  It's just a large nation with an open society and a good information infrastructure, and so a certain fraction of scammers are to be expected.
Now, there are other aspects of the Indian school system which merit concern, but the publishing scams should not be the basis for any opinion that you hold.

It's also worth noticing that scam journals are often not actually based in the countries they say they are.

This answer is a bit too politically correct in my opinion. You can note that there is a high concentration of fake journals, and thus fake science in India (including from established scholars, and in institution where reporting fraud is associated with retaliation) without judging all scholars from this country.

@CapeCode The problem is that the cost of setting up a fake journal and spamming for it is so low, I don't think there's much signal there.  If you look at Beall's list are you actually certain there is a disproportionate representation from India?

He does report a high concentration of fake publishers in Hyderabad and India in general.


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Why include a table of figures?
Many postgraduate theses include as part of their front matter a List of Figures and a List of Tables, plus lists of various other special environments. Many institutions, including my own, directly require the inclusion of at least those two Lists at the front of the thesis.
However, I have never really understood why a thesis should have those two environments at all; they've mostly just been yet another page to scroll past on the way to the meat of the thesis.
On the other hand, if you have a print copy of the document, I generally find it much easier to flip through the pages, since graphics tend to stick out, and more so if you have a general idea of where the figure is (such as having a figure identifier that gives the chapter) or what it looks like (as when looking for a figure one has seen previously).
What use cases are lists of figures or tables meant to serve? In what situations are they meant to be useful? Do they still work, or are they simply an artifact of pre-pdf days?

If you only have a few, distinctive, images, then flicking is fine. But if you have thirty visually-similar organisational charts, as with a book I read yesterday, and you want to find a specific one, it breaks down fast...

When I refer back to a thesis to find a piece of information, I find the lists of tables and figures to be extremely useful. I often have a general idea of what I am looking for. Turning that general idea into a simple text search that does not yield hundreds of hits is difficult. By reading the short captions in the list of figures, I can generally find the figure I want.

To clarify, this is both with printed and on-screen versions? If the former, isn't thumbing through the thesis looking for a specific graphic easier? Are you looking for a figure you have seen in a previous reading of the thesis, or are you hoping that the thesis will contain a figure with a specific piece of information? If the latter, isn't scrolling and looking at the graphics themselves easier?

@E.P. I would rather skim a list of figures that is a couple of pages long than flip through a thesis page by page (either paper or electronic). In my field a PhD thesis is usually 200-500 pages long and might have 50 figures. I use lists of figures both when I am looking for something I have seen before and when I am looking for something new.

You appear to start from an assumption of reading on screen.  If some actually wants to read a thesis (as opposed to looking something up in it) there's a fair chance they're working on paper.  An examiner for example. A list of figures/list of tableswill help them track down some of the important material quickly.
If someone has a paper copy, good lists are really useful, but xcost a couple of pages
If someone has a PDF copy, the list costs them nothing.  A few bytes of data, and there's no need to scroll past it as any decently-produced thesis PDF will allow you to click on the headings (or "Contents") in any decent PDF reader.
So even with primarily electronic distribution (which is an optimisitic assumption) these lists will benefit some of your readers, including some important ones.
I found them quite useful when checking the print copies -- text was easy to spot-check, but ensuring that the figures came out right was important.

When I go through a thesis (especially a voluminous one) I tend to look for comparison and performance graphs; some of which are not always in the results and discussion section. I feel that the list of figures are pretty much helpful in this aspect.

It's a good point that some basic results may be included in a section describing how to analyse them. These  figures can say a lot about a thesis.


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The title of a book is different in the catalogue and on the cover. How do I cite it?
I would like to cite a chapter from a book which is listed in the catalogue as Attosecond and XUV Spectroscopy: Ultrafast Dynamics and Spectroscopy (Wiley, 2014, edited by Thomas Schultz and Marc Vrakking), found here at the Wiley site and here on Amazon. I'm somewhat confused about how exactly to cite this book, since if you look at the cover...

... the title is different. To add to the confusion,

the book is listed under the catalogue title (Spectroscopy) in multiple library catalogues and most google search results,
but not everywhere, including WorldCat and several Wiley pages;
the citing articles on Google Scholar are split about 50/50 on both (with Google Scholar correctly recognizing both forms as citations to the same resource!),
some of them even switching sides;
the title page has the same title as the cover; and
each book chapter has a footer with the cover title (Physics).

My question is: how do I cite this book? Given that pretty much every rule of libraryness seems to have melted down, do I just choose whatever I find sexier and forget about it all?

To really confuse people: there could be two competing books with those two titles...

Not with the same editors and publication year, though. Either choice is pretty unambiguous.

List both. The official title is whatever is on the book, no matter what (so even including any typos and stuff). Still, it makes sense to mention the problem:

Thomas Schultz and Marc Vrakking (eds). Attosecond and XUV Physics: Ultrafast Dynamics and Spectroscopy [also known as "Attosecond and XUV Spectroscopy: Ultrafast Dynamics and Spectroscopy"]. Wiley, 2014, 624pp. ISBN: 978-3-527-41124-5.

Bear in mind that the title is the one listed inside (on the first sheet of paper), not on the cover (thanks Andrew for pointing this). Also, I would include the ISBN in this case, even if you don't include it for other book references. Either in a standard way as shown above, or in a note like the following; remember that rules for providing auxiliary information are quite loose and you can twist them to your needs:

Thomas Schultz and Marc Vrakking (eds). Attosecond and XUV Physics: Ultrafast Dynamics and Spectroscopy. Wiley, 2014, 624pp. [also known as: "Attosecond and XUV Spectroscopy: Ultrafast Dynamics and Spectroscopy". ISBN: 978-3-527-41124-5.]

Ah ok, well, yes, citations of chapters are very big. Nothing to worry about. Sorry for my strong response in the previous comment, I was really scared by the thought.

"whatever is on the book" is correct, but you should mention the one enormous caveat: it's the title page, not the cover, that defines this. Covers can have all sorts of extraneous (or missing) text on them and you should always defer to the title page if in doubt.

Pick one, preferably the one that is listed on publishers own lists. The important thing is that the ISBN number is right and anyone who might be interesting in getting to the referred material can adequate do so with the given information.

In case it wasn't clear from the question, the publisher's lists are inconsistent. I'm not using a citation style with ISBNs - it is not used in the physical sciences as far as I'm aware.

@E.P. I would be for an exception with the ISBN in this case, I'll update my answer to reflect this.

Any one will do.
The main aspect behind citations is to make the reference reachable to the readers. If both citations indicate the same content then you may use any one you feel content with (and stick to it for uniformity).

And for the very reason you say, both titles should be listed, not any single one of them. Giving more information is the way to make the reference reachable.


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What to do if asked to write a letter of recommendation for a weak candidate?
How should a professor proceed when a student or colleague asks for a letter of recommendation and the professor does not have a high opinion of that person?

In short: Just say no.

At the risk of putting anyone on the defensive (I don't mean to); when would the answer ever not be "say no"? The letter writer would be doing the student/colleague a huge disservice by writing a weak letter but letting their expectation remain that they have a strong recommendation.

@JohnMoeller I asked because this answer suggested that some people think differently.

Fair enough. I suppose that you could say, "I'll write you a recommendation, but it will have to be somewhat weak."

Although it may be quite awkward, it is certainly acceptable to tell the student/colleague that you do not feel you can write a strong LoR for them, and to suggest that they ask someone else. This may seem rude or even unkind, but it's much better for the student/colleague in the long run than a lukewarm or poor letter.

In fact, in some cases students don't understand that they should get the best letters possible, or that it's not all perfunctory.


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Looking for sources of online graduate-level education
Can anyone suggest sources of online graduate-level education, as well as some criticism of them? Both free and paid are valid. I'm familiar with these sources:

Academic Earth
MIT OpenCourseWare
Kahn Academy
NYU Open Education

and I'm curious to know what other resources are available.

Cloud you be more specific? Currently the question is way, way to broad.

Do you mean free online graduate education?  Lots of universities have online MS programs that charge tuition.

@JeffE Free and paid.

Oy.  Okay, in what field(s)?  Computer science?  Economics?  Nursing?  Russian history?  Can you at least narrow it down a little?

Also, do you want criticism of specific venues for online graduate education, or do you want criticism of online education in general?  (Please don't say "both"!)  And criticisms about what aspects—educational quality, reputation, intellectual depth/rigor,  schedule flexibility, access to faculty, expected economic payoff, or what?  (Please don't say "all of the above"!)

@JeffE Haha, the worst part is that i'm curious in all the aspects you suggested.

Then this is a bad question; I'm voting to close it.  Please consult the [faq], especially the line "If you can imagine an entire book that answers your question, you’re asking too much.", and ask something more focused.

At the graduate level there is less and less 'standardized' material like in undergrad. You might take a few introductory graduate courses that are pretty similar across universities, but then you tend to take very specialized courses (at least in my experiences with fields like math, computer science, and physics; and my answer should be taken as only relevant to those fields). Further, the number one skill you are suppose to learn in grad school seems to be independence.
If some specialized course is not offered at your university then the standard procedure is to look for good lecture notes on the websites of experts in that field. These experts usually teach relevant graduate level courses and post their lecture notes online. In fact, some of these lecture note become rather famous:
What Lecture Notes (in theoretical computer science) Should Everyone Read?
Then you have to do what every graduate student has to do, and that is to motivate and teach yourself with the guidance of those lecture notes (and maybe Q&A sites like SE or emails to the relevant experts). Some tricks to make this is easier is to form groups with other graduate students and learn the material together through regular meetings and discussions.

I've found many interesting & diverse lectures in the Education section of Apple's podcast directory (I can't verify that link at work, I hope it's correct). While most are undergraduate, some are taught at a higher level, and they're a good resource for when you need to learn a new discipline in grad school.


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Valuing one field more than another
As my field, Computer Science (CS), has many sub-areas and specializations. I found myself having a not-so-good impression about different areas within CS. For example, I see working on Software Engineering as a waste of time while working on Artificial Intelligence (AI) is much more worthing an investigation.
This is not a field-specific question, I wish hearing whether this exists on other fields as well. Is it common in academia for individuals to find some subfields of a more broader research area more interesting and relevant than others? Relatedly, how does one avoid thinking that way?

On a somewhat related note, my research went from "soft science" to "hard science" just by changing department. I think both terms are used in a slightly derogatory way.

Just because you think it is worthless, does not make it so. My own experience is that this kind of thoughts stem more from personal predjudice and interest than from objective fact.

This is actually a good thing (TM).  If you don't feel that way about your field, then is it really your field?

Although there is a difference between loving your own field, and disliking others. I think it is possible to love what you like to do without being condescending about what other people like to do.

Relevant: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0la5DBtOVNI

Just like the grass is always greener on the other side, it is somewhat usual for people to think that their particular area of expertise is somewhat more valuable than others. I have seen it in all fields I have heard of…
And it's not restricted to academic life: I'm sure the cardiac surgeon feels that his work is so much more important than that of the family physician, while the later thinks that he's the one tasked with stopping epidemics and diagnosing the important stuff to save lives.
But I'm sure you already knew that… so, what is your question exactly?

Edit: how does one avoid thinking that way?
The most difficult part, for me, in thinking objectively about other fields is to be able to correctly identifying the challenges they face. I find that it is altogether too easy to think “hey, that's a trivial optimization problem” or “know that they know the compound formula, I wonder why it takes them so long to synthesize it”. Better overall understanding of other fields helps a lot avoid this way of thinking. It takes a lot of effort to acquire such a broad general knowledge: reading, listening to conferences outside your area of expertise, chatting with colleagues, …

I think the "How does one avoid thinking that way?" part is key.

It's important to distinguish "what I find interesting" from "what someone finds interesting" from "what I think is important" from "what is important to others".
It is perfectly acceptable to find other fields uninteresting - that's just the nature of subjectivity and personal preference. Or more poetically, "vive la difference".
It is less acceptable to go from "I personally find this area boring" to "this area is boring". At that point, as others have suggested, you need to understand why others in the field find it interesting. Ask them ! Put yourself in their shoes. (I will often say, "I'm glad someone is working in area X and I'm glad it's not me" :).

The harder prejudice to avoid, at least for me, is not "this field is boring" but "work in this field is poor science, even on its own terms".

@JeffE: but that is already a more objective statement. Just to note, in some fields, the nature of the tackled problem is such (at the current state of the art), that we do not have a good grasp on its context (yet). Work on such problems then often seems to be "substandard craft". Compare e.g., early research on knowledge representation with hard stuff produced later on. And the same goes for e.g., image recognition, etc.

The same thing happens in many different fields, mathematics, physics, etc...  Many in academia criticize computational scientists like myself as too interdisciplinary (i.e. we are jack of all trades, but masters of none).
I think it naturally emerges from the competitive nature of academia these days.  We're all competing for precious resources, such as funding, tenure track positions, prestige and attention, etc.  To be competitive, we must assert that our work is more worthwhile than others.  In the face of criticism and competition, people of the same field sometimes are tempted to assert their worth by belittling the value of other fields.
There's no better way to avoid doing this than to distance yourself from others who engage in the "we're better than them" attitude.  Unfortunately, it can be difficult if you're already surrounded by people with this mentality already.  In which case, it might be worthwhile to just get out of your comfort zone and attend research seminars and presentations in completely unrelated fields.  Sometimes, if you surround yourself with others who value a topic that you don't, you can learn how to appreciate it in ways you've never thought of before.

Is valuing one field over another is a common behavior in academia?
The other answers clearly answer yes. There can be subjective reasons to such an observation (e.g., a cardiologist could feel more superior to a gastroenterolog), but there might be also an objective part to the observation (as you example goes, the results produced in software engineering are somewhat shakier than those in graph theory).
How does one avoid thinking that way?
Besides an excellent point by other answer saying "you should try to better understand the challenges of the other field", I also argue that you should better understand the dynamics of scientific pursuit in general.
Kuhn, in the Structure of Scientific Revolutions argues that scientific work in any given field has three phases. The first, pre-paradigm and subsequent transition to normal science are relevant for this answer:

The first phase, which exists only once, is the pre-paradigm phase, in which there is no consensus on any particular theory, though the research being carried out can be considered scientific in nature. This phase is characterized by several incompatible and incomplete theories. If the actors in the pre-paradigm community eventually gravitate to one of these conceptual frameworks and ultimately to a widespread consensus on the appropriate choice of methods, terminology and on the kinds of experiment that are likely to contribute to increased insights, then the second phase, normal science, begins, in which puzzles are solved within the context of the dominant paradigm. Etc.

Often we observe somewhat substandard results and works in fields which clearly fall into the category of those still being in the pre-paradigm phase. Your specific question is relevant to this due to the fact, that whole of computer science is still a young field and many problems we are solving are new, often vague, or ill defined, etc. This is is especially the case for the fields and communities tackling applications of applied-mathematics-style computer science to real-world applications, i.e., software engineering. Your reference to software engineering is clearly the case here, large parts of artificial intelligence fall into this category as well, and I am sure other fields and subfields too.
Even if you find yourself working in a "soft" field, it does not necessarily mean the niche community is not tackling a sound problem (though sometimes it is the case, but you need to look very carefully into it). Sometimes working on such can be even more demanding/challenging/satisfying than routinely solving puzzles in the normal-science context.