I have been considering returning to university to continue my education and further my knowledge. I have a strong interest in finance, but before I dive in to a second degree/diploma at this stage in life, I want to take one or two courses to see if I can get back in to real coursework.
Having been out of university for many years, my initial thought was to take one or more courses through continuing education as a place to start. I remembered that you can audit courses (typically at half the cost of registering in a course directly). I was reading through the Audit Regulations and I was surprised to see that participation in classroom discussion is not allowed.
The auditing student shall not participate in class discussions, assignments, examinations or in laboratory or like parts of the course.
I understand that that as you are not registered in the course, you would not be able to participate in exams for credit and/or receive graded assignment etc... however the inability to participate in class discussion was a little disappointing.
Based on the Business classes I took while in university, the classroom discussions are the core of most courses. What is the rationale for not allowing auditing students to participate in class discussions?