UNC System President Peter Hans confirms all syllabuses will be public records | Hacker News Reader

UNC System President Peter Hans confirms all syllabuses will be public records

dailytarheel.com

22 pointstoomuchtodo6 comments

Faculty work products including syllabi and their research should be considered work-for-hire and owned by the public, since we pay their salaries.

I’ll take the bait. I’m guessing you don’t pay state tax in Kansas, so you don’t pay my salary. I’m totally down with anyone in the state reading my stuff, though.

> I’ll take the bait. I’m guessing you don’t pay state tax in Kansas, so you don’t pay my salary. I’m totally down with anyone in the state reading my stuff, though.

With all the federal education grants/aid/what have you, it's hard to imagine that your institution is purely jayhawker funded.

Kansas universities, like other colleges and universities, receive federal funding and student loans.

I read the article. It isn't clear to me, but I'm guessing that the concern from faculty is the willingness of bad actors to harass people who teach anything they find objectionable (like the first grade teacher who was targeted for the "Everyone is welcome here" poster in her classroom). Is this the reason for pushback?

It's a damn shame that the internet has given terrible people the reach to make life even harder for educators, regardless of whether that's the specific concern here.

> Is this the reason for pushback?

I suspect it's more a general anti-AI training thing, actually.

Nobody technical I ever worked with had an issue with putting the course syllabus up on a website before now.

I didn't mind if students recorded my lectures, but I did ask them not to share beyond the students as a courtesy to both myself and other students. I didn't want students being afraid to ask questions in class because they might be recorded. And I didn't want my lectures really going outside, especially if I gave advice or teaching tailored to the class itself. My technical experience is hard earned, and I'm not being paid anywhere nearly enough by a university for it to be shared to the public at large.

In this day and age, I'd probably take a much harder line. If I'm being paid to teach students, I'm not expecting the lecture to be fed into the AI maw. If AI wants my lectures, they can pay for it.

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