Ohio's public universities kicked off the fall semester this week with a new administrative burden: every undergraduate course syllabus now has to be posted online where anyone, student or stranger, can find it without logging in. The mandate comes from Senate Bill 1, and it is already costing schools tens of thousands of dollars a year with no help from the state to pay for it.
Ohio State University has turned to a platform called Simple Syllabus, built by developer Simple Higher Ed, to meet the requirement, according to WOSU Public Media. The tool lets instructors create, duplicate and deploy syllabi quickly, and it is now woven into the university's CarmenCanvas learning system so assignment schedules sync automatically, according to Ohio State. The catch: Ohio State's contract with Simple Syllabus runs $45,000 a year plus a $10,000 implementation fee, locked in for three years, per the university's contract as reported by WOSU.
That price tag isn't unique to Columbus. Public records show software contracts to comply with the syllabus rule range from $27,500 at Kent State University up to $55,000 at Ohio State, according to Signal Cleveland. Those costs have to come out of existing operating budgets, since Senate Bill 1 provided no dedicated funding for the software universities now need to follow it.
The Law Behind the Push
The mandate traces back to Ohio Revised Code § 3345.029, enacted through Senate Bill 1, which requires public universities to make undergraduate syllabi publicly searchable without login credentials, reachable within three clicks of a school's homepage, and archived for at least two years, according to Clean Catalog. The Ohio Department of Higher Education required every public college and university to submit a Syllabi Compliance Report detailing implementation plans by June 30, ahead of the new academic year.
Senate Bill 1, formally the Advance Ohio Higher Education Act, does far more than regulate syllabi. The law also eliminated campus diversity, equity and inclusion offices, barred public university faculty from striking, and instituted a mandatory American civic literacy requirement for undergraduates, per Signal Cleveland's reporting. Governor Mike DeWine signed the legislation in March 2025.
Faculty Push Back Over Privacy
Not every campus is thrilled about the new transparency requirement. Theresa Kulbaga, an English professor at Miami University and president of the Faculty Alliance of Miami, told WOSU that she and other faculty members have privacy concerns about publishing course content for anyone to see. She said Miami University's total service cost could end up being much higher than what Ohio State is paying.
Kulbaga also questioned whether the public version of a syllabus even matters much to the students it is ostensibly meant to serve, noting that students care about the syllabus handed out in class, not necessarily the one posted online months in advance. She said no students had seen anything she had posted on Simple Syllabus, and argued the service cost is enormous and does not support the university's educational mission, per WOSU's report.
Her sharper worry is about exposure. Kulbaga said publishing course content publicly opens professors up to targeting, harassment, doxing and unfavorable public opinion, WOSU reported, with those concerns centered on courses that touch on race, gender, climate change and other subjects that draw political heat. University of Cincinnati faculty union leadership voiced a similar warning in July, telling Open Campus that public syllabus repositories are intended to exert a chilling effect on faculty that could discourage instructors from assigning controversial readings.
Different Schools, Different Fixes
Miami University has adopted Simple Syllabus as well, but the school has tried to thread a needle between compliance and classroom flexibility. Instructors are guided to post concise, compliant Syllabi on the platform while sharing more detailed Course Guides, including grading rubrics and attendance policies, internally through Canvas, according to Miami University. The law requires public posting of reading lists and course calendars but not full instructional rubrics.
Not every Ohio institution went with Simple Syllabus. Bowling Green State University and Ohio University instead contracted with a competing platform called Concourse, per Open Campus. Simple Higher Ed says more than 80 higher education institutions across states with similar public syllabus mandates, including Texas, Florida, Utah and North Carolina, now use its software, reflecting how quickly these transparency laws and the companies built to serve them have spread through conservative-led states.
The rules also flex depending on the type of institution. Ohio's 22 community colleges are permitted to omit instructor qualifications from their public syllabi, while specialized schools like Northeast Ohio Medical University are exempt entirely because they don't offer undergraduate courses, according to Open Campus. Ohio State's own Simple Syllabus template requires instructor name and qualifications before a syllabus can be published, and the university has configured the system to keep graduate-level course syllabi hidden from public web searches, since the state's mandate applies strictly to undergraduate classes.
The requirement takes effect with the 2026 fall semester now underway, meaning students, parents and anyone else curious about what's being taught in Ohio's public university classrooms can, at least in theory, find out with a few clicks. Whether that transparency changes what gets taught, or who is willing to teach it, remains an open question for faculty like Kulbaga.
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