So the adult argument has fell through. Now it's about being a customer.

Service providers can fire customers. If you pay for membership of a club but never attend functions, the club will end your membership.

If the service aims to provide a community or is invested in the success of its customers then it should fire customers who are not invested in their own success.

Not to mention how many students are not customers. They are sponsored by parents and scholarships and heavily subsidized. All these stakeholders have a vested interest in academic success. Tracking attendance is better for all of them.

If Caltech isn't the place for you, that's fine - there are many other choices. It was the place for me.

The adult argument didn't fall through. If you pay a psychologist for an appointment and you don't show up the psychologist will happily arrange another appointment and gladly receive the money. You are comparing a job to university but they are not comparable in this way.

The adult argument has absolutely fallen through because adults' attendance is tracked in another situation. So it's not a matter of being adult. It's a matter of what the specific relationship is of the student to the university.

It's ironic you mention psychologists. Therapists, personal trainers, life coaches, and other 1-to-1 service providers are the most likely to fire a customer for not attending. I personally know someone whose vocal coach made an ultimatum about attendance and ended up firing the customer. This is all very much adult.

In the end it's the sad consumerization of higher education in America. The pricing makes students so bitter as to demand "better service" rather than "better education". A university is more like a job in most of the world.