Yes, UNC Syllabi Are Public Records

Earlier this summer, the Oversight Project filed a public-records request with UNC seeking the release of class materials and syllabi for 74 university courses.

According to the Oversight Project, the goal was to identify academic materials that defy President Trump’s executive orders—most notably “Ending Illegal Discrimination and Restoring Merit-Based Opportunity,” which demanded compliance with the SFFA v. Harvard admissions decision and strengthened oversight of DEI initiatives on campus. The group asked UNC to turn over materials containing keywords such as “anti-racism,” “DEI,” “LGBTQ+,” “intersectionality,” “sexuality,” and others.

State institutions run on taxpayer dollars, which means the materials they produce belong to the public. The Oversight Project’s push in North Carolina has stirred a real debate and raised a straightforward question for faculty, administrators, and lawmakers—and for students and parents, too: Should course syllabi be public?

If you don’t feel like reading any further, I’ll save you the suspense: Yes, syllabi, course materials, and assignments at public universities are public records. These institutions run on taxpayer dollars, which means the materials they produce belong to the public.

Tar Heel State lawmakers should move quickly to put a clear policy in place. Nevertheless, as the Release the Syllabi Movement gains momentum, universities are pushing back. Administrators and faculty increasingly argue that syllabi are proprietary intellectual property—an ethically and logically indefensible position.

North Carolina’s Syllabi Rift

North Carolina offers the latest example of institutional resistance to releasing syllabi. The Oversight Project’s sweeping request to UNC-Chapel Hill sent administrators and faculty into a quiet panic.

It also opened a rift among North Carolina’s public universities over whether a syllabus counts as a public record. UNC-Chapel Hill officials have made it clear they believe all course materials—syllabi, lecture notes, presentation slides, etc.—are faculty intellectual property and therefore protected by copyright. On that basis, the university’s leadership refused to comply with the Oversight Project’s public-records request.

UNC Greensboro, however, reached the opposite conclusion. According to sources familiar with the matter, UNCG administrators instructed faculty to hand over their spring 2025 syllabi to comply with the Oversight Project’s records request.

North Carolina Public Radio reported that the directive came from UNC Greensboro’s own university counsel. That raises an obvious question: How can two state schools within the same public system arrive at completely different policies? It seems even the universities’ attorneys don’t have a clear answer.

Hopefully, North Carolina’s syllabi rift doesn’t grow so deep that it becomes impossible to bridge. Tar Heel State lawmakers should move quickly to put a clear policy in place and establish a uniform approach across the entire UNC System.

Transparency Matters for Students, Parents, and Taxpayers

America’s colleges and universities drifted from their original mission long ago. Fueled by a steady stream of federal dollars, they’ve grown into bloated ivory towers—insulated from the communities they’re supposed to serve and detached from the real world around them.

Shrouded behind layers of secrecy and closed-door decisionmaking, public universities—and the administrators and faculty who run them—have carried themselves as if they’re exempt from the law, shielded from public scrutiny, and entitled to act as unquestionable academic overlords ruling over a non-PhD populace.

All of this has contributed to a sharp decline in public confidence in higher education. In 2015, nearly 60 percent of Americans said they trusted colleges and universities. By 2024, that number had dropped to barely one-third, according to Gallup.

Transparency is the first step toward rebuilding the public’s trust. Those numbers make one thing obvious: Something has to change. Transparency is the first step toward rebuilding the public’s trust. Unfortunately, far too many university administrators and faculty still haven’t gotten the memo.

With some elite colleges now charging close to $100,000 a year—and with tuition rising and $1.7 trillion in student debt hanging over the country—students have a right to know what they’re paying for. They deserve clarity about course content, expectations, and the overall educational approach of a college.

Unfortunately, far too many university administrators and faculty still haven’t gotten the memo. Parents—who often foot the bill for their kids’ college years—and the taxpayers who fund these ivory towers also have a right to see what our public institutions are teaching.

Making syllabi public would boost parents’ confidence in universities by showing the actual rigor—or lack of it—in course content, reading lists, and assignments. It would also expose the ideological bent of much of American higher education—and that’s precisely what our academic overlords would prefer we never see.

The Academic Freedom Argument Doesn’t Hold 

Every time someone pushes for syllabi and course materials to be treated as public records, the same tired clichés start flying from the Left. We hear the usual buzzwords—“academic freedom,” “weaponization of FOIA,” “right-wing witch hunt”—and see headlines suggesting professors are terrified of what might come next.

University administrators and faculty love to argue that releasing syllabi somehow undermines academic freedom or invites “syllabus theft.” No one is trying to limit academic freedom—least of all me. But academic freedom protects teaching, not secrecy.

As for the “syllabus theft” argument, the rise of AI has made that claim laughable. We’ve all seen the stories about educators using AI to grade essays and assignments. If that’s happening, no one can seriously argue they aren’t also turning to AI when building their syllabi. Why spend the summer writing one when ChatGPT can churn out a draft in minutes?

Another favorite argument is that professors “own” their syllabi as authors and that sharing them with the public somehow violates copyright. But professors at public colleges are hired to teach publicly funded courses at taxpayer-funded institutions. Period.

As someone who spent most of his twenties in graduate school, I can tell you firsthand: The professorial caste has a dismissive stance on this issue. Most university professors have no interest in being questioned about what actually happens inside their ivory towers.

I saw this firsthand a few months ago, after the State of the University address at the University of Wyoming. After the event, I had the “pleasure” of sparring with a rather mean-spirited administrator. I was asked what my top higher-ed reform priorities were, and I plainly replied: Require syllabi to be public. My sparring partner immediately made a face and reacted as if there was fire in the room. This started a rant about why syllabi shouldn’t be treated as public records and eventually led to the claim that the public isn’t knowledgeable enough to review them—especially, something like a physics syllabus—even if they are public records.

Other faculty opponents see public syllabi as part of some vast right-wing conspiracy to silence left-leaning professors. Just a few months ago, during debate over Florida’s new regulation requiring colleges to post syllabi online, Robert Cassanello—the president of the United Faculty of Florida—claimed, “What they want is to sort of unleash the online mob on certain faculty.” In other words, he suggested that making syllabi public would put a target on liberal professors.

Some faculty opponents see public syllabi as part of some vast right-wing conspiracy to silence professors. There are states where public-university syllabi are already public records, and there haven’t been any noticeable Salem College Professor Trials, or at least I haven’t seen one in public.

Treating syllabi as public records doesn’t undermine academic freedom—it strengthens it. It shows the public that good teaching and honest, transparent educators have nothing to hide.

Treating syllabi as public records doesn’t undermine academic freedom—it strengthens it. The Legal Landscape 

The debate over treating syllabi as public records isn’t unique to the Tar Heel State. Across the country, there’s a growing push to hold universities accountable and bring transparency to the secrecy-shrouded academic and administrative practices that have defined higher education for far too long.

Texas is the national leader on this front. A 2009 state law requires all public institutions to post their syllabi online, including major course requirements and reading lists.

Earlier this month, the Florida Board of Governors unanimously approved its own amendment requiring faculty to make public a list of required or recommended textbooks and instructional materials for each class—along with a full syllabus. Florida is now one of several states moving in this direction.

This year has been a good one for syllabus transparency. Indiana lawmakers passed a law earlier this year requiring public institutions to post all syllabi on their official websites. The University System of Georgia has also adopted a policy requiring faculty to publish their syllabi online.

Other states—North Carolina among them—should follow these states’ lead and reclaim public ownership of syllabi.

The Path Forward 

The Oversight Project’s push to make public-university syllabi available in North Carolina has opened a real, historic opportunity to reform the state’s higher-ed system.

The Tar Heel State has a chance to lead the nation on this issue. North Carolina’s forward-thinking lawmakers and higher-ed reformers should require every public-university course syllabus to be posted online before the semester begins and kept accessible for at least five years. They should also push for a searchable statewide syllabi database—a model several states have already adopted.

Clear, unequivocal guidance that syllabi fall under the state’s open-records law would be a game-changer for transparency in North Carolina. Lawmakers have the authority to make this standard and to establish penalties for institutions that drag their feet or refuse to comply.

North Carolina’s faculty and administrators should accept a simple truth: Openness is the price of public funding. If taxpayers pay for it, the public has a right to see it. Treating syllabi as public records would bring real transparency, strengthen academic standards, protect students and parents—the actual customers—and maybe even rebuild some public trust in higher education (if that’s still possible).

Public colleges and universities belong to the public—and their syllabi do, too.

Jovan Tripkovic is communications manager at the James G. Martin Center for Academic Renewal.