No, I’m not talking about students bribing faculty for good grades, but the reverse: faculty bribing students to attend events outside of class. For example, I offered the students in my class five bonus points on tomorrow’s mid-term exam if they attended last night’s Alan Lightman lecture. I’m fairly certain that 12 of the 16 took me up on it.
My feeling is that this has an almost negligible effect on the final grades, but can make a big difference in the audience for an evening talk. And it’s often beneficial for students to attend these events and get some sense of the larger intellectual universe. I have colleagues, though, who are adamantly opposed to this sort of thing, viewing it as some sort of corruption of the academic system (I think– I’ve never gotten a really clear explanation).
So let’s throw the question open to my readers:
Is it appropriate for a professor to bribe students to attend an evening lecture or other intellectual event by giving extra credit points for showing up?
Leave your answers in the comments. If you’re willing to indicate your approximate age as well, that might be interesting, as I’ve sometimes thought there was a generational component to this.