Transparency Requires More Than Half a Syllabus

James G. Martin Center for Academic Renewal ^ | March 16, 2026 | Stephen Porter

[karpov]

The UNC System’s new policy requiring public posting of faculty syllabi is grounded in a sound principle: Taxpayers deserve to know what is being taught at their public universities. Greater transparency strengthens public trust and reinforces institutional accountability. Under the new policy, faculty are required to include specific categories of information in their syllabi, and universities in turn must make those syllabi publicly available. This is not merely a suggestion of openness but a formal compliance obligation placed both on individual instructors and on the institutions that employ them.

Yet, while the policy contains important improvements to current practice, it ultimately fails to accomplish its stated goal. Unless amended, it is easily evaded in practice and will produce only a façade of transparency.

To its credit, the policy clarifies that syllabi are public records. That is no small matter. At North Carolina State University, for example, administrators long maintained that faculty members held the copyright to their syllabi. That interpretation effectively shielded syllabi from public-records requests, as the university claimed it lacked authority to release documents it did not own. The new system-level clarification removes that ambiguity and affirms that syllabi at public institutions are, in fact, public documents. This reform is significant and long overdue.

But the policy’s central transparency mechanism contains a critical loophole. Syllabi must now include “a list of all course materials (physical and/or electronic) that students are required to purchase” [emphasis added]. The limitation to materials students must buy is the policy’s fatal flaw.

In contemporary higher education, many assigned readings are not purchased at all. Nearly every faculty member in the UNC System uses course-management software such as Moodle. These platforms allow instructors to post PDFs, scanned chapters, and links to electronic library materials accessible only to enrolled students.

[BenLurkin]

The very fact that this nation’s “educators” feel the need to hide what they are teaching is cause for alarm in and of itself.

[Myrddin]

When I was student at UCSD in 1974, the college bookstores were open for anyone to shop for merchandise including text books used for classes. That was true at UCSD and SDSU. Both had fine bookstores. When I moved to Pocatello, Idaho in December 2000, the ISU bookstore was also wide open. The advent of COVID caused ISU to close up the bookstore. You can't peruse the book shelves anymore. If you are signed up as a student, you can request the books required for your class...and your class ONLY. I stopped going to the bookstore once that was exposed as the new policy.

Last Tuesday, I went to Barnes and Noble in Idaho Falls. I was interested in computer science and language books. There was NO computer science books on the premises. The shrinking shelf space finally disappeared completely. The language section is very small and very limited now. It once spanned almost a full aisle. Very disappointing.

[rellic]

I fail to see the problem.
I was an Electronics engineer
major and switched to Computer
Science. Why should an instructor want to
copyright their syllabus?
I always bought used Textbooks
where possible. That taught me to HATE
Highlighters.
In Liberal arts I can see where the problem is,
unlike Calculus math books, Liberal arts
textbooks change every election cycle
or even quicker.
Fundamental Theorem of the Calculus has
not changed much since 1665.
Nor has P=IE.

[Karliner]

I used to love a nerd bookstore, I think it was Sci Tech Books near UC Irvine. You could buy any books and used, open to public.

If you liked reference books out of date sometimes you could get them before the dumpster. I heard it finally closed for some reason

[aspasia]

Hmm. The syllabus as legal document.

[BipolarBob]

I’m knot very edumacated but even i know there’s four syllables in transparency.

[Flash Bazbeaux]

I just checked out a place I used to go when I lived in LA in the 80s, Op-Amp Technical Books. It closed more than six but less than 13 years ago, judging by Yelp reviews. It was on Sycamore Ave in Hollywood, of all places — right next door to the Record Plant recording studio. I think they shared the parking lot.

[Myrddin]

One of my favorite shops was the "Computer Literacy Bookstore". There was a location in the San Francisco bay area near Fry's (where silicon and potato chips were offered to engineers burning the midnight oil). San Diego was blessed with "San Diego Technical Bookstore". It was outstanding. Not just computers. Biology, chemistry, physics, electrical contracting and more. A sad side note, the store was bankrupted by a criminal embezzling employee. Attempts to recover the business failed. I purchased my copy of Bergey's Manual of Determinative Bacteriology from that store in the Summer of 1973. Leading edge at the time, it is a true anachronism by today's standards. Border's had a fine computer science section for years until they went under. My bookshelves at home are well stocked with a broad range of EE/CS books and language books. It's sad to see the bricks and mortar store dumping both categories.