<p>Is there any issue (legal/ethical) with publishing or distributing class syllabi to people outside of a class?</p>
<p>From what has been said, a syllabus is a sort of “contract” between professors and students. I don’t know how honest this is, but under those circumstances, is distributing a syllabus to prospective students bad?</p>
<p>Some professors have them readily available on their websites while others don’t, so my guess is it would not be illegal. Other than that, there is the ethics part.</p>
<p>If a professor makes his syllabi available to anyone, there’s no danger in referring prospective students to the professor’s website. Just don’t collect them on your personal website or print 10,000 copies of it.</p>
<p>It’s more problematic when a professor does not make his syllabus accessible to people outside of his/her class. In the beginning of the semester there are usually more people in the room than actually end up taking the class; so professors have to assume that some people outside of the class get to see the syllabus, but they do not necessarily expect that someone mass-distributes it across campus. On occasion I have given a syllabus from a previous class to a friend who was interested in taking the same class with the same professor in a later semester, but I would not distribute them on a larger scale. </p>
<p>What do you want to do with the syllabi anyway?</p>
<p>at my school it’s definitely fine since almost all classes distribute syllabuses to all prospective students and not just the ones who are going to take the class that semester. Plus you can view them all online if you’re willing to search for them.</p>
<p>Ask your professor first. Though I don’t know why you’d want to seeing as classes can be added/dropped after students see the syllabus beforehand.</p>