Can I Sit In?

Robin Hanson took several free classes at Stanford, so (1) seems unlikely. (This was in the 80s, I suppose it’s possible things have changed since then.) I have no experience with 2. 3 seems likely, but it’s hard to know. Some thoughts:

Class size matters. Of course in a class of 100 people, they wouldn’t even notice if someone sat in on the course, and many introductory econ courses are exactly like this. Perhaps this isn’t the case at top schools, lending more credence to (2).

The level of the course also matters. What courses do these professors teach? Graduate classes are less likely to allow free learning, since they are usually small, focused on student’s individual projects, require lab access to complete course work, require extensive previous knowledge, etc. Lower-level classes seem more likely to allow sitting in.

An experimental test would be cheap and would be an interesting publication. If you didn’t want to lie to professors (I want to sit in!), you could use survey data instead (What would you say to someone who wants to sit in?). After that all it would take is a copy/paste email to a lot of randomly chosen profs.

Swimmy’s comment is useful.

I graduated from college a few years ago, but I’ve thought about going back and crashing some classes in subjects I wish I’d studied more or have since become interested in. I look unassuming and I figure I could get away with it.

Like Swimmy hinted, I’d have to make sure I was crashing a big lecture class (at least 75 or 100 students), not a small lab class. Those big classes are usually introductory.

While I could sit there and listen, I probably wouldn’t be so bold as to raise my hand and offer a comment for discussion or anything like that, lest I should be found out somehow as a result. That means I’d have to count on the other students in the class to offer up insightful comments and feedback. But most of the dullards in big introductory lecture classes are incapable of this.

One way around that problem would be having an insider–a legitimately enrolled student–abet my crime. If I had something I wanted to say, I could just write it down and slip it over to my legit friend. Or if we both had laptops, I could just instant message my comment to him. Of course, then I’d have to make sure he could deliver the comments in his own verbal style, without arousing suspicion by looking like he was always reading his comments off a piece of paper or his laptop.

But then, if I had such a talented and dedicated friend who was already taking an introductory lecture class, there’s a good chance he could just explain everything he was learning to me while he was outside of class (and since he’s so gifted he could probably afford to part with his textbook for a few days while I caught up), defeating the purpose of crashing the class in the first place.

So until then, I’ll have to settle for a cocktail of Wikipedia, the library, and assembling a set of friends with diverse expertise between them.

Doesn’t an ethical issue arise here ?

Professors get paid well, and their employers have to recover that cost by charging for access. “Colleges do not card” only because the informal system makes it unnecessary. That system is at least partly an ethical habit.

Professors lecture only to those who have acquired an entitlement to hear. That, they may feel, is a duty they owe, an incident of their employment contract. Exceptions do not change that rule.

I think its possible that the two Professors lied to you because they realised that to admit the truth would undermine their beliefs. I doubt that they were being actively dishonest; I think that they were also probably lying to themselves, and honestly believed what they were saying was true when they said it. However I think that if someone came to them and asked to sit-in on a class they would most likely agree. But I might be wrong.

Free attendance of classes is only welcomed as advertising for support and payment in some way?

In the late 80s and early 90s I sat in for free on many classes at Stanford. They were mostly graduate classes, and many of them were small classes with lots of class discussion. I participated in those discussions. I asked permission from many professors, and none turned me down. In one class I did so well that the prof was willing to write me a letter of recommendation to grade school.

I wouldn’t mind at all so long as the person could pass as a student.

If they didn’t look like a student (looked homeless or were 8 years old) then I’d be concerned about other faculty objecting.

I suppose there’s a signaling story in there.

One way around that problem would be having an insider–a legitimately enrolled student–abet my crime.

Is it a crime? I don’t think so.

The university sells educational credit and if one amasses enough of them in the proper configuration, a degree. Merely sitting in does not earn credit – one needs to be enrolled and take exams in order to get credit. So unless you are charged with trespassing, I see no crime here.

A learned person publicly reciting things – that should be free to any listener who otherwise is not disruptive and interfering with the contractual relationships the other students have with the university.

While learning something new is certainly valuable; its value is not highly marketable. Try applying for a job that requires a degree and telling the employer “but I sat in on all the classes.”

I agree with Robert. I suspect that the economists want to believe that they would refuse such a request, but that if someone ever asked they would probably end up letting them audit the class after all.

One has to remember that all decisions are made on the margin, and so what does a college sell on the margin? I would argue that its marginal benefit is the signaling provided by a degree. From personal experience, From person experience, most subjects, unless they are extremely difficult for the student, are less expensive to learn time-wise through a book or online sources than through a classroom setting. Furthermore, one would think there are strong selection effects in people who consider doing something like auditing a class, in that only the more intelligent people would even consider it. This basically means the only real place that it would make a lot of sense would be in upper-level or graduate level classes, where policing would be quite easy.

This may sound like a rampant signaling argument, but there is an important distinction to make between colleges marginal benefit being the signaling they provide and their total benefit being the signaling that they provide. Nor is this to say that if there was no human capital element to college education, but rather that the colleges can only make themselves the most efficient alternative by selling two goods, or even three in the case of social life. To sum it all up, colleges are not the most efficient producers of human capital, so they do not need to card, but that does not mean that they are not producers of human capital.

I am a current professor and former curious outsider. From both sides, it has been my universal experience that qualified outsiders are welcome. My sample covers around 15 classes over four universities.

I’ve just learned that my local school, the University of Texas at Austin, has an official policy on this: “A nonstudent under age 65 needs instructor consent, and will pay $20 per course to the cashiers in Main Bldg room 8.”

So at least here $20 will cover any ethical qualms you might have about stealing education.

In my >40 years teaching experience, I was asked several times by people if I would mind if they sat in on my course. I always agreed immediately.

But those were always large or larger enrollment courses (75 – 500). If someone had asked to sit in on one of my grad or honours seminars, I would have grilled them on their background and preparation before agreeing to their participation.

So if the world-class labour economists were thinking of small grad seminars, I can understand their responses.

I taught economics at a major university for more than thirty five years and always welcomed those who wanted to sit in. A few times non-enrolled students did so for the whole semester. After class one day I asked one why he didn’t enroll. He answered, “I intend to do so next semester. But I need an “A” in this course so I’m sitting in this semester.”

I never followed up on this, but he didn’t enroll in my course the next semester.

I formerly taught at medical schools. If a person who was not a registered student tried to sit in on my lectures, I would have told him to leave. If a student from another department or college wanted to sit in on my lectures, I would have welcomed him. The difference, to me, is simple. The latter paid to attend the school; the former wants to occupy a classroom seat and benefit from my teaching without paying. That is both inappropriate and a policy violation at the medical schools where I taught.

Unregistered students in the class illustrate a free rider problem — until such time as the lecture room reaches full capacity, in which case it becomes a tragedy of the commons problem. In practice, the number of unregistered students attending a class is way short of the level that would be needed to make the room reach full capacity and exert negative externalities on the registered students.

I sat in on one of Gary Becker’s classes on Human Capital. I’m a Ph.D. student in Mathematics at the University of Chicago, so I’m in the University, but registering for any class outside the math department is not acceptable for Ph.D. students, and I didn’t want to register anyway.

I didn’t actually tell him I wasn’t registered, but at some point when I answered one of his questions, the matter came up. He jokingly noted that I was a free rider, and then jokingly mentioned something about taxing me, but that was it. I participated a reasonable bit in the class, and nobody seemed to mind.

I also sat in on one of Robert Fogel’s classes at the business school, again without registering. I don’t think I told anyone I was unregistered, and nobody bothered to ask.

Both Becker and Fogel are economics professors at the University of Chicago with Nobel Prizes to their name, so they fit the “economics professors from top schools” bill.

Robin Hanson:

In one class I did so well that the prof was willing to write me a letter of recommendation to grade school.

Thank you for my chuckle of the day.

I’ve audited an electrical engineering course and both the professor and the TA were welcoming and further they were even interested in my goals!

This may have already been addressed – I haven’t read all of the comments. But look at incentives:

Profs get paid regardless of who comes.

Profs want to extend their reputation, and want to feel important.

So profs benefit in intangible ways when extra people show up, and it doesn’t cost them anything. For smaller classes, other students might object due to the diluted classroom experience, though undergrads are unlikely to care. But prior permission is likely required for the smaller classes.

Universities don’t hire guards to keep people out (at least not the ones I’ve been to). However, if it started to occur on a widescale basis, then I suspect universities would crack down. But it doesn’t, so they don’t.

Therefore, I suspect your professor friends are full of it.

Or if you are unable to sit in on a course, coulnd’t you borrow the textbook from a library and read it? Education is cheap, its the diploma that’s expensive.

Interestingly, this story has just popped up in Ireland, about a nursing student who keeps attending lectures after failing exams:

“The High Court has granted an order for the arrest of a former nursing student who has refused to stop attending lectures despite having failed first-year exams.

Her continued presence at lectures was disruptive to other students, lawyers for GMIT said.”
http://www.rte.ie/news/2012/0920/gmit-arrest-order.html

[Quoted material elided to comply with copyright. Please keep your quotes to a minimum to comply with fair use laws.–Econlib Ed.]

A lot of objectors keep making the argument “The auditor takes discussion time away from other students”.

I think that misses the central point (the “Least Convenient Possible world” in LessWrong jargon): the question is about students who *just* want to listen in. If it’s really just a matter of taking resources from other students, then answer the question under the proviso that the student is not allowed to ask questions or otherwise “tax” your resources.

(In graduate school, I had a professor who did exactly this: he allowed auditors, but specifically announced at the beginning of the course that only those enrolled in the course could ask questions, and that if there weren’t enough handouts to give to everyone, auditors would have to go without.)

So is your real objection that you wouldn’t want to have to differentiate the students like that?

The argument that a taxpayer, a huge portion of whose taxes goes to support education, is a free rider on the educational system is absurd. The educational system in the US is a huge drain on the public fisc through subsidies, grants, and exemption from taxation (and what the public gets in return from that system are generally abysmal results). Until the universities are willing to give up all reliance on public money, the average student is the free rider, not the occasional taxpayer who wants to audit a class.

JeffM, I hear you, but by that reasoning, I’m entitled to free airfare, free food, etc. That’s madness. Yes, end subsidies to all these things, I agree, but remember, everyone is being taxed, so the tuition-paying students are paying 2x. They are still my priority.

My experience matches yours. I sat in on basically all of UCSD’s core engineering courses. The professors, and there were more than 15 of em, all accepted my request to sit in. They liked that I was engaged and brought some real world work experience. It’s a fairly easy thing to do.

Mr. Skoble

I at least felt that our back and forth did not reach a conclusion and so feel compelled to respond to your most recent comment.

I’d like to start with rhetorical effect. However much an economist may assert the phrase “free rider” to be a technical term of art that is “value free,” it is not. The phrase implies a moral judgment that someone is unfairly benefiting from something toward which he did not contribute anything. In fact, the average adult taxpayer in the US contributes heavily toward the educational system and almost certainly more than the marginal cost imposed on that system by his auditing a course. I do not think we disagree on the factual premise of that point although we may disagree on the rhetorical effect. In any case, I do not think the case against auditing by taxpaying adults can logically be based on the proposition that they are absorbing resources with a marginal cost that exceeds the marginal cost of the resources that they have contributed through taxes. Of course, that does not mean that no logical grounds for objecting to auditing are valid. It simply means that, as an empirical fact, auditing seldom falls even within the technical definition of free ridership and so does not raise that particular moral problem.

This issue is entangled with the concept of “public goods,” of which education is a classic example. Most students, even college and graduate students, do not pay the average cost of their education through their taxes and tuition combined. Rather, if any group is free riders, it is the students themselves: thanks to payments made by others, they are the ones receiving services while paying less than the average cost of those services. Any taxpayer whose taxes at least equaled the average student’s tuition plus taxes would have an equal moral right to audit or even to take a course without any tuition whatsoever. (At a private university, the calculus is admittedly much more difficult because such organizations receive far less of their funding from government and because estimating the value of government services that they receive tax free is quite uncertain.)

I suggest a thought experiment. Would most people consider immoral a law that required public universities to permit any taxpayer who has paid at least $100 in state income tax in the previous year to audit one course each semester, provided that the selected course is not filled with students paying tuition?

In your second post, you raised what I believe is a more substantial point. The government subsidizes many things, and yet not all of them are provided free to all comers. Is there a morally or economically rational basis to the distinction? I have never seen one articulated. In any case, it is seldom the case that the fee for government services covers the cost of service. This makes me believe that the only valid argument for the distinction is to prevent a tragedy of the commons. Air travel is not free (for most of us), but entrance into an airport terminal is free. I suspect the reason is that free air transport would greatly increase the resources required whereas free entry into an airport terminal has very little effect on the size and number of terminals required.

A tragedy of the commons problem seems, however, like the most fanciful of objections with respect to access to lectures and reading lists for university courses.

Jeff Morrow