This statement by "People's Lawyer" and U.S. Supreme Court Justice Louis Brandeis (1856-1941) underlies our nation's Freedom of Information Act. In a free republic, ordinary citizens keep state officials and employees honest by opening them to the scrutiny of FOIA.
As a historian, I have used FOIA requests to expose past corruption in the U.S. government. Local newspapers have used the state "sunshine" law to access the contracts of top officials, including SIU President Glenn Poshard and former SIU Chancellor Walter Wendler. As tuition-paying students at a state university, SIU students have every right to demand that this "sunshine" principle be extended to teaching.
SIU has a unique opportunity to market itself as the nation's first "open book" university - a school that makes course content and evaluations available to current and prospective students.
As every student knows, the undergraduate catalog reveals little about actual course content. Furthermore, while students evaluate ("rate") courses each semester, individual faculty keep the data and it never sees the light of day. The course evaluations do help faculty improve their teaching based on student feedback.
However, information is a two-way street - students also need this information to make decisions about the courses they take.
My "modest proposal": a Web site centralizing course information, including both syllabuses and teaching evaluations. The site could also include the official resumes of professors - good for media relations. If "easy" courses (high average GPA) earn high course evaluations, this will generate a discussion of raising standards, thus the value of an SIU degree.
On the other hand, high-achieving students want the most for their money and seek out rigorous courses, often by word of mouth. This proposed "sunshine" site takes the guesswork out of finding and selecting courses that match the needs and interests of students.
If posting evaluations provokes opposition, then begin with course syllabuses. After all, if every student is entitled to a course syllabus on the first day of class, then why not make it available in advance?
I have put my syllabuses, past and present, on my SIU Web site (see http://tinyurl.com/8egfh). If the university agrees to this policy, I will put my course evaluations online, too. Yet this is not enough: Students need a "one-stop shop" to find information on all courses and professors. Prospective students will benefit from the same service.
What better protection against false advertising (i.e. courses that don't match their catalog descriptions, courses that have not been offered in years)? Nothing is more frustrating to students than to arrive at SIU and find the courses they wanted are no longer taught.
Critics respond that information may drive teachers to lower standards. This fear is overblown. Besides, the alternative is for students to rely on unscientific, sensational sites such as ratemyprofessors.com.
If outside vendors are already producing misleading information about SIU courses, we must seize the opportunity and turn lemons into lemonade. What better way for SIU to show its commitment to students? And what better way to have prospective students beat a path to our door?
Bean is a professor teaching history.
