August marked the return of thousands of students to college campuses nationwide. Whether they were eager to return to the classroom is debatable, but if they weren’t enthusiastic, one reason may have been the lack of access to course syllabi. In many cases, students don’t receive this document—a detailed description of the course along with an outline of the semester’s schedule—until the first day of class.
This is problematic because, without a syllabus, students cannot know if they are even interested in what the course will cover. For example, a course titled “American Questions: Found of Amer Society to 1877” on Emory University’s course atlas includes only a two-sentence description: “Seminars arranged around current issues and controversies in American culture. May be repeated as topic changes.” This is extremely vague. What are the “issues and controversies” being discussed? What readings are required? What is the structure of the course?
Students often face these unanswered questions when they register for classes, and their options for clarity are limited. They might email the professor, though there is no guarantee of a reply before the registration deadline—if they receive one at all. They might consult Rate My Professors, but its reviews are uneven at best: most posts come from students who either loved the class and passed or disliked the professor and did poorly, leaving little in between. Or they might rely on word of mouth, which is hardly reliable since professors do not always teach the same courses each semester.
Worse still, the risk of courses filling up forces many students to enroll even when they are left with vague course descriptions and mixed opinions about the professors. The stress of course selection doesn’t end once you click “Enroll”—that’s only half the battle. When students finally gain access to the syllabus, they must decide whether to keep or drop the class. If they choose to drop it, they often have to scramble to find a replacement, since by then, the most desirable courses are already full. Take it from me, a senior: waitlists aren’t fun.
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One university system is on a quest to solve this issue.
In an effort to promote transparency, the University System of Georgia (USG)—the governing body overseeing the state’s 26 public universities—is implementing a policy that requires schools to publicize all course syllabi on their websites. In May, the USG announced that published syllabi must include required readings, a course description, key learning objectives, and other components such as an attendance policy. The policy was rolled out in stages. At the start of this past semester, syllabi were required to be posted for all required core courses and courses offered by the Colleges of Education. By next year, every course at USG institutions will be required to have its syllabus available online.
For me, the policy is a good step toward ensuring students understand what they are signing up for, but the Atlanta Journal-Constitution reports concerns about potential harassment of professors and violations of academic freedom. University of North Georgia professor Matthew Boedy acknowledged the policy’s goal of transparency but warned about “bad-faith actors” who may deliberately seek out controversial terms or readings in a syllabus and then harass the professor. “I think this is a massive treasure trove for people that are wanting to attack higher education,” Boedy told the paper.
To avoid this, professors may begin self-censoring their syllabi, which largely defeats the purpose of the policy. Tim Cain, a researcher of academic freedom at the University of Georgia, noted that several of his colleagues regularly receive death threats from people who disagree with their work. By making syllabi publicly available, he warned,
If I’m deciding to put on my syllabus certain things that have the potential to cause people to attack me for no good reason, I don’t want to put my family through that, so I’m not going to assign X reading.
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Perhaps these concerns are valid, but they seem more like a deflection than a genuine risk. If what professors are teaching is academically sound, there is little reason for secrecy. Requiring syllabi to be publicly available simply holds instructors accountable and ensures that courses are not vehicles for political indoctrination; the very reluctance to share them, to me, suggests that professors are trying to hide something.
I developed such suspicion after interning with Speech First and contributing to its report, Critical Condition: How Medical Schools Are Forcing DEI Orthodoxy on Future Physicians. What struck me was not only that the content we uncovered through public-record requests was politically charged—an entrenched social-justice framework that often displaced biological reality—but also the extraordinary lengths institutions went to in order to keep documents, such as syllabi, hidden from researchers. Syllabi often offer the clearest glimpse into whether a class is devoted to genuine education or merely functions as a vehicle for ideological messaging. That, I believe, is what opponents of the USG’s policy truly fear: that making syllabi public will expose how they use their courses to push ideology.
The USG’s new policy is a welcome step toward transparency, both for students navigating course selections and for the public seeking accountability. Students paying thousands in tuition—or taxpayers funding these institutions—should not be left in the dark about what a course actually entails.
Image by rahul on Adobe Stock; Asset ID#: 1614700679
Discussing professors’ fears of harassment over their syllabi, Ms. Harris writes “Perhaps these concerns are valid, but they seem more like a deflection than a genuine risk. If what professors are teaching is academically sound, there is little reason for secrecy.” I suggest a third possibility: The concerns and risks are genuine but we should proceed anyway, even at the risk of professors’ safety. As we have witnessed in the past few years, and more painfully in the past two weeks, we face risks from both the heckler’s veto and the assassin’s veto. Keeping silent out of fear surrenders our freedoms. There is nothing fair about this: Having to take risks for liberty at a time not of our own choosing bears some resemblance to being drafted into a war when one’s country comes under attack. Nevertheless, that happens, and running away scared will surrender our civilization.