We have the same push at our university, and it’s a very bad idea:
The University System of Georgia (USG) implemented a policy in 2025 that requires syllabi to be publicly posted onto university websites before registration…
USG says the change “aims to ensure that all students have access to the critical information necessary for informed course selection and successful academic planning.” … UGA professors are required to have their syllabi available before registration opens for fall courses, a change from the past two semesters in which they were allowed to wait until one week before courses began.
We are told the exact same thing in a way that is so identical, it’s weird. “Students need it! It’s critical information! Successful planning!”
I’m opposed but almost nobody else is so the measure will be introduced.
Here’s why I am opposed.
There are two types of professors. There are those who teach the exact same course for decades, recycling it endlessly and repeating the exact same thing over and over again. For these professors it will be extremely easy to provide their syllabi 6 months before classes start, which is what “before registration” means.
There are also professors who come up with new material, new course structure, new readings, and new lectures all the time. Professors like me. I’ve never taught the same course in an identical way. This measure exists for one reason: to get rid of innovative, interesting teaching. It exists to shut up people like me. We will be locked into one standard syllabus that will be vetted and posted and it will reappear automatically on the website every semester. If you want to do something new or innovative, you’ll open yourself up to complaints for not following the pre-approved, pre-posted class program.
What I really despise is how it’s justified by supposedly being in the interests of students.
Clarissa's Blog 
The students aren’t going to read the syllabi, regardless of when they’re posted. This is for conservative activists who want to attack woke professors.
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Yes, there are so many conservative activists in the leadership of my university. Veritable crowds of them.
Headdesk.
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Awww, the delusions of persecution are so cute though. You have to ignore reality *so hard*.
😀
ethyl
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The more interesting question here is, who is issuing these directives to all the unis at once?
-ethyl
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That’s the crucial question. One source I have been able to identify is “the LGBTQ Executive Leadership Program” at Stanford. They hold workshops that many college administrators attend, and these strategies are being taught there.
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What is their agenda? Like, what do they hope to get out of this?
I know, I know, immanentizing the socialist utopia or something.
But seriously, who’s funding them, and what are their goals?
ethyl
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I think they are collecting them to train the AI. So it is a death of teaching since they will simply replace us.
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Based on Clarissa’s experience with DuoLingo, they might replace all foreign languages with this app.
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That would be a dream come true. Imagine never having to schedule Spanish 101 again.
Unfortunately, it’s not going to happen because the focus you need to carry out something like this is increasingly rare.
Protect your focus, my friends. It’s becoming an endangered species.
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I offer students 16 credits – one whole semester closer to graduation – for free if they pass the same proficient test I passed last week in German. Serious savings right there on the spot. The only people who pass are native speakers who already speak the language.
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https://x.com/i/status/2050934084612833551
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I don’t think I can do it all over again. I’m still in recovery from 2020-22. I have a nervous tic from even just thinking about it.
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We have to pass on the lessons learned to the next generation better than conservatives have been. Even during eras of brief right wing victory, you do not see this victory reflected as firmly in culture as you’d like. This may be due to our natural tendency to want to relax and ignore politics once the big and obvious threats are taken care of. Meanwhile, the left is constantly plotting.
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