New Texas law forces universities to post course information online
A new Texas law which will take effect in September will provide students all sorts of information about college classes and all public Texas universities will be required to give away information on their websites about courses, professors and the cost of attending school.
This law is aiming at keeping the students informed on the real costs of attending schools, and make decisions on what school to attend, what classes to take and which professors to study with. Lois Kolkhorst, the Republican State Representative that is the author of the bill says that the college costs are constantly rising, so the point of the new law is to provide students and parents with more information before they pick a school, helping them to spend their money more efficiently. The professors do not agree with this law, and say that it will turn education into a business, attempting to cheapen the costs and lowering the level of education along with it.
Under the new law, the universities must post a detailed syllabus of each class for each semester which is giving the description of the course requirements, the subject matter of each lecture and all the required or recommended readings. The future to be students will also be able to see the professors’ curriculum vitae, the previous semesters’ student evaluations of the professor filled out at the end of each semester by all the students and their comments. The declared purpose of this law is that if the students are able to see what a course or a professor is expecting of them, they are less likely to drop the class during the semester, which will save them some money.
Students also say that when seeing other students’ comments and evaluations of the professors will help them choose classes suitable for them. The information will be available without having to create an account and sign in and should be placed no more than three clicks away from the school’s home page. Some universities provide this king of information on charge, but no school from the United States is giving the complete information required by this new law. For example the University of Michigan provides current syllabi for currently enrolled students and University of Florida displays on its website the prices for its courses, but only a brief description of the course topics.
The law is very popular among the students, but the professors doubt its true purpose the consequences it may have on the college education experience. The law is viewing the student as a consumer and the professors say that it will eventually undermine the students’ level of education by tempting them to choose the cheaper courses in the detriment of those that are more expensive but maybe more useful for their future career. The Texas Conference of the American Association of University Professors asked for the repeal of the bill and say that the detailed description of the syllabus will force professors to give up discussing controversial subjects in the classroom because they will have to stick to the plan. John Curtis, director of research and public policy for the American Association of University Professors, says that this bill is about controlling the curriculum and about forcing professors to stick to the the rigid syllabus.This means keeping students from developing their minds through free discussions and not being able to move through different topics and discussions, which might cripple the students’ general knowledge. This debate is likely to continue into the fall semester, but in the mean time more students begin to use the extra information provided by the university websites. For the time being the law has only be applied to Texas, but if it is found successful there they may choose to enforce it all over the United States.
