As students well know, picking the right courses at a large university can be fraught with uncertainty. The catalog is often vague and uninformative, especially when a single description covers class sections taught by different teachers in distinctly different ways. In 2008, the Pope Center proposed a way to make students’ selection process more than a toss of darts.
Today, we are reporting that many faculty, administrators, and students agree with us.
In his paper, “Opening Up the Classroom,” Jay Schalin argued last July that faculty members should post their syllabi—detailed descriptions, complete with readings—at a time when students are actually registering for class, not on the day they take their seats. Schalin documented four reasons for posting such documents on the Web: “to aid students as they register for courses, to expose a professor’s deviation from normal expectations or acceptable academic standards, to aid in pedagogical research and information sharing, and to make comparisons between classes at different universities easier for the determination of transfer credits.”
To find out whether this idea—which seems easy to an outsider—poses insurmountable problems, the Pope Center sent a survey to a targeted group of over 300 faculty, administrators, trustees, registrars, and others, selected because of their likely interest in the topic. We sent a separate survey to roughly 700 students.
The students who responded supported the proposal overwhelmingly. When asked, “Do you think colleges and universities should require professors to post detailed course descriptions, such as syllabi, for students during the course registration period,” 79.6 percent said “Yes.”
One student summarized the overall theme of the comments: “We deserve to know what to expect before we sign up for a course.” (For example, one professor could shape a course entitled “Twentieth Century American Women Authors” around novels by Edith Wharton, while another professor could choose to highlight the poetry of Maya Angelou.)
Another big majority, 61 percent, of students said that in their college career they have been disappointed because a course wasn’t what they expected, based on the course description. And 20 percent of students said they have dropped a course because it was so different from their expectations based on course descriptions alone.
Sixty-four percent of student respondents have “shopped” for courses at some point. That is, they registered for more courses than they intended to take; after classes began, they dropped the ones that they didn’t like. In a university where important courses fill up quickly, this practice can keep some students out of the classes they want and makes it difficult for professors and students to plan ahead.
Faculty and administrators also supported the idea that students should have early access to syllabi—65 percent of the respondents agreed with the proposal that “colleges and universities should require professors to post detailed course descriptions, such as syllabi, for students during the course registration period.” (See graph on left; numbers are rounded to the nearest full percentage.)
“Students, parents, and ultimately faculty benefit when they have better information on which to base decisions,” said one faculty member. Another said that students should have access to faculty evaluations in addition to syllabi or course descriptions. Several noted that public universities need more transparency. Some professors and administrators agreed that the policy would (in the words of one) “help students avoid classes that are heavily ideological.” 
And more than half (55 percent) thought that public universities should make such information available to the public as well as to students. Schalin’s study had argued that at a public university, taxpayers should be able to know what is being taught. He said that if academic freedom gives faculty the right to teach pretty much what they want, “they should be required to fully disclose what ideas they are teaching.”
A small number (9 percent) of faculty members and administrators oppose mandatory posting, even if information is limited to students. Several thought the policy would be cumbersome and unenforceable, and one said it would be “a further example of the transformation of colleges into high schools where administrators rule.” Another professor said that at times even a syllabus isn’t an accurate depiction of a course. And one worried that having syllabi available would help radical professors target “traditional scholars and young non-Leftist faculty.”
The accompanying table summarizes the survey results. The Pope Center gathered the data using SurveyMonkey, an online survey tool that enables users to create their own surveys. Emails linked to the survey were sent to faculty, administrators, registrars, trustees and others.
A separate email was sent to the Pope Center’s student list, which is comprised of students at ten public and private universities in North Carolina. Thirty-four current and retired faculty, administrators and trustees responded to the survey, a response rate of over 10 percent. Thirty-nine students responded (a rate of five percent.)
Now we are hoping for some action!
