Why Pay and Not Go?

To University I mean. We currently pay £3,200 PER YEAR to go to university, and my course in particular has a serious lack of classes. This semester (between now and when we finish for summer which is the week of the 18th of April!) We have a class on Tuesdays, wednesdays and thursdays, totalling 7 hours class time. This compared with other courses is certainly not a lot. On top of this we don't have any exams and if I am honest, only a minor amount of homework and assignments. Granted these assignments drove us insane over Christmas and no doubt will again before deadlines in May. But I personally think we have gotten off lightly to be doing a "real course", despite what some people think, and to have so little class time. So where is the excuse for not turning up?

There are several members of my class that turn up every time, myself being one of them, and then several who rarely turn up, the worst lesson for class attendance is, unsurprisingly, the thursday morning class at 9am. This class, however, is currently the most important because we are set a small assignment every two weeks to be completed and handed in as a group piece. The grades for all of the separate assignments will be added up and then you will be individually be awarded your average grade. In an attempt to make each persons overall grade fair you must be in a different group for every assignment. I don't know personally, is it just me or does this seem flawed? Im not sure what it is but it doesn't seem quite right to me. Even just the fact that some people can't even be bothered to turn up to the lessons suggests to me that these same people are unlikely to equally pull their weight in a group.

So the question comes down to why are these people paying to NOT come to the meagre amount of lessons we have? I guess they are paying £3,200 a year for the "student lifestyle", which is all well and good because I imagine they couldn't get up to half the things they do here if they were living in their parents house, but still. Even renting a flat wouldn't be as expensive as being at uni. I can't help but think of the people who didn't get a place on the courses over the people who are on courses but never go to lessons. Seems awful unfair to me. I am the last person you would see condoning the rise in tuition fees, however it most likely would stop the people who come and don't bother going to lessons and might make people think twice about missing out on lessons to go drinking. But then it probably wont, because the world is just a big mess like that.