system
Given the following post, respond as if you're commenting on Reddit:
human
College courses should never include participation or attendance in their grading rubrics. CMV.

College students are young adults, entering the "real world" on their own, and are generally there of their own accord, because they want to pursue higher education. Unlike when they were attending secondary school, their education costs money, and usually a lot of it.

Participation and attendance grades exist to provide incentives for a student to come to class and speak; yet the purpose of coming to class and participating is to facilitate learning. While having these incentives in place makes sense when dealing with children, it is not necessary when dealing with young adults who have the capacity to make choices about their own learning. If a student feels like they can retain the material without attending every lecture, then they shouldn't be forced to waste time coming to the superfluous classes. 

In addition including participation and attendance in the grade damages the assigned grades accuracy in reflecting a student's performance. If a class has participation listed as 10% of the grade, and student A gets an 80 in the class while not participating, and student B gets an 85 with participation, then student A actually scored higher on evaluative assignments (tests, essays, etc) yet ended with a lower grade (as student B would have gotten a 75 without participation).   

Finally, participation is a form of grading that benefits certain personality types in each class, without regard to actual amounts of material learned. If a person is outgoing, outspoken, and extroverted, they will likely receive a better participation grade than someone who has difficulty talking in front of large groups of people, even if the extroverted person's knowledge of the material is weaker. In addition, this leads to a domination of classroom discussions by comments coming from students who simply want to boost their participation grade, and will speak up regardless of if they have something meaningful to add to the conversation. 

The most effective way to CMV would be to show me that there are benefits to having participation/attendance as part of the grade that I haven't thought of, or countering any of the points that I've made regarding the negative effects.
gpt
In the "real world," attendance is mandatory. If you don't show up to the right meetings, or they don't see you at your desk when they want you to be at your desk, you get fired. You can argue that shouldn't be the case, but if you want to talk about students entering the "real world," that's what it's like.

Same goes for participation. Doing great work isn't enough in the "real world"--you have to make it clear, especially to the right people, that you're the one doing that work, that you can back your work up if challenged on it, and that you can participate in a collaborative environment.

It sucks that the "real world" is structured in a way that benefits extroverts, blowhards, and doing what you're told to do over doing things more efficiently. But if you believe that the goal of college is to prepare people for the "real world," well... that's part of it they need to be prepared for too. 

If you believe college should be something different--that it should be about education for education's sake? That's still no reason to make attendance optional. If you know the material, or believe you can teach yourself the material on your own, you should test out of the class instead (and should have the option to do so). You're not just wasting your time, you're also wasting the instructor's time and taking up a perfectly good class slot that another student might be able to make better use of.

As for participation? Knowledge isn't a one-way street. A participatory class makes for better teachers and better teaching. Participation means the teacher can check students' comprehension. It gives them insight into whether or not their education methods are working, in a much more granular and immediate way than looking at test scores would, as well as giving them a glimpse into the preconceptions and related knowledge their students are likely bringing with them to that particular subject.