OpenSyllabus

The Open Syllabus Project (OSP) is a non-profit initiative that catalogs and analyzes millions of university syllabi to provide an empirical map of higher education’s curriculum. Based at Columbia University’s American Assembly, the project has collected over 27.6 million syllabi from thousands of institutions worldwide. Using machine learning and natural language processing, OSP extracts metadata to identify the most frequently assigned texts, authors, and subject trends. Its primary tool, the "Syllabus Explorer," allows users to visualize a "knowledge map" of disciplines and track the evolution of teaching choices over the past 15 years. This platform supports curricular innovation, lifelong learning, and scholarly research by making the expertise embedded in university teaching choices searchable and accessible to the public. It serves as a vital resource for librarians, publishers, and educators looking to understand what is actually being taught on the ground.