Abstract
Nineteen academics explored student motivation to learn, and to attend formal teaching sessions, based on perceptions that university attendance at lectures in particular had been declining over several years, and increasingly since covid. Collectively and variously we: shared our own experiences; explored the literature on attendance, on student motivation, and on learning and teaching in higher education; kept abreast of covid-related developments internationally; explored the application of metacognitive awareness and critical thinking in the context of motivating learning; and researched university teachers’ perspectives on their students’ decreasing attendance. Our analysis of the latter suggested that teaching colleagues might be experiencing a form of identity crisis relating to the roles and responsibilities of higher education teachers. Emergent and reoccurring themes in the data questioned the links between higher education inputs and outcomes, noted feelings of personal responsibility inadequately supported by collective responsibility, and expressed concerns about what teachers can and cannot control and about who does have control.