Editorial | Let there be syllabi

Picking classes isn't easy.

In many cases, the only information given about a class is a brief sentence or two in the Course Register. In other cases, syllabi are available, but only after a hard-fought effort to track down a professor. And, in the worst cases, no syllabus can uncovered at all.

This lack of information creates enormous problems for students trying to decide what classes to take.

Penn students should not be relegated to making their enrollment decisions solely based on course titles and scores in the Penn Course Review (or only based on the course title, if the class is new). Syllabi contain information vital to a class, from the reading list whether the class' final is a test or an essay. This turns add/drop into a massive shuffle, where students can finally figure out their classes once they have access to a syllabus.

And the most shameful part about the situation is how incredibly easy it is to fix.

No matter what class a students ends up in, the teacher will have a syllabus to distribute. Every class' professor eventually produces a syllabus, they just aren't making them available online. And most aren't making them available early.

With the technology easily available, Penn should develop an online database to allow teachers (even low-tech ones) to easily post syllabi.

And, as Gabe Kopin - president of the Student Committee on Undergraduate Education - pointed out in a column on this page, Penn is years behind many of its Ivy League peers, such as Princeton and Harvard universities. Many other schools have created a online database of course syllabi. His organization recently released a proposal that urged the University to create such a database.

Administrators should listen to SCUE and start requiring teachers to post syllabi - and post them early.

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