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Comment by allturtles | Hacker News Reader

True, but I think it's rather beside the point. Administrators shouldn't be censoring materials from professors' syllabi.

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Nah that is fine.

The issue is only when professor suspect of being liberal changes assigned reading in any way. That is the only possible big issue

Core curriculum is always controlled by the university. The professor can sometimes make requests and get them approved.

At the university level, this is patently false. Professors have wide latitude to pick the texts for their classes except in lower division classes that might be taught by a TA.

This is more nuanced than “controlled by the administration or not”.

Universities that have accreditation (typically regional accreditation for nonprofit and private research universities) have to meet certain standards for certain curriculum design. Within those requirements there is wide latitude.

That doesn't seem more nuanced between controlled by administrators or not.. An accreditation may have a minimum number of hours for Greek Classics and could expect the topic of Classical Greek Cultural norms to be compared/contrasted with modernity or it may not be mandatory to cover. That's a bit short of an accreditation telling an administration to ensure the topic is never covered or to police every unlisted topic a professor may cover.

Nah, university approves learning objectives for a course, but how the objectives are achieved is up to the professor.

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