tokens: Should students be required to attend classes? The issue at hand is whether it should be obligatory for university students to attend classes . This is an interesting question because it affects a great amount of students worldwide . Nonetheless there are various different policies regarding this topic . An important aspect might be whether one desires to optimize the learned knowledge or the amount of valuable experiences for the students . However, to my mind students should be free not to attend classes because it improves the quality of student life as well as their learning motivation and teaches important life skills . Firstly, a liberal policy is very feasible . Checking for attendance requires a lot of bureaucracy . Especially for larger classes it is impossible to check for everybody to attend . So an optional attendance saves time and money . Secondly, some students might learn better at home on their own, for instance, by reading the textbook . This problem occurs especially if the lecturer is lethargic . By letting students choose not to attend class you give them the opportunity to escape bad teaching . Thus they are able to save precious study time and dive into the course syllabus independently . In addition, being free to stay away from classes improves flexibility and therefore quality of student life . Sometimes the wild party on Thursday night is too good to end already at midnight only because of a lecture on Friday in the morning . With a liberal policy students are able to postpone the learning to the afternoon which gives a feeling of freedom and improves time efficiency . Research has shown that the more satisfied the students are with those life aspects, the better they perform in academic areas . Finally, psychology knows two types of motivation . There is intrinsic motivation which comes from your own mindset . And there is extrinsic motivation which comes from the praise and laud of other people . Intrinsic motivation is known to be much more desirable because it leads to better learning and well-being . However, in order to gain intrinsic motivation students need to become aware of their strengths and aims . By giving students the freedom to choose about class attendance they might rather be thinking about why they decided to study and learn to motivate themselves . These are crucial skills for the duration of their study and their whole life time . To conclude, it is clear that going to classes should be optional for students . I hold this belief due to the improvement of students' current experience as well as the valuable skills and knowledge they obtain for their whole life afterwards .