Transparency in Higher Ed (Public Institutions)

TheJoeGreene · Apr 14, 2026

Transparency Shattered Higher Ed—It Can Rebuild it, Too

The last few paragraphs:

First, make course syllabi public. Colleges routinely claim to be teaching students to engage critically with the full range of scholarly opinion. The syllabus evidence suggests otherwise. Publication of syllabi would create accountability and reveal whether universities’ public claims square with what they’re doing in the classroom.

Second, publicly funded conference presentations and peer-reviewed research should be systematically indexed and published. Academic work should not be exempt from transparency standards governing other publicly funded activities.

Third, colleges and universities should publish data on grade distributions over time and across departments. If colleges want the public to believe that they still uphold rigorous academic standards, they should be willing to show whether grades continue to reflect meaningful differences in student performance.

Finally, colleges and universities should adopt the Compact for Academic Excellence in Higher Education’s recommendation that they “publicly report anonymized data for admitted and rejected students, including GPA, standardized test score, or other program-specific measures of accomplishments, by race, national origin, and sex.” Demonstrating that illegal and unpopular affirmative-action practices are not continuing would help rebuild confidence in higher education.

Universities confident in their research, syllabi, admissions practices, and grade distributions should welcome scrutiny. Those unwilling to reveal their practices only make it harder to distinguish defensible and indefensible educational choices. In the end, opacity serves no one—least of all higher education’s strongest defenders.
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One caveat I've heard mentioned by Matt Burgess (University of Wyoming) is some conferences where presentations are being done on ideas that haven't been fleshed out yet.

Ismitje · Apr 28, 2026

The conference one wouldn't bother most of us here since we have no public funds for travel, and haven't for a very long time.

Dr. Wankler · Apr 28, 2026

Ismitje said: ↑

The conference one wouldn't bother most of us here since we have no public funds for travel, and haven't for a very long time.
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I don’t think I’ve been to a conference in 20 years.