Is it appropriate for a professor to require students to sign a non-disclosure agreement before being taught?

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There's a professor at my school that claims to be writing a book. He is requiring students to sign a non-disclosure agreement (NDA) before certain lectures because he wants to maintain certain ideas of teaching his content part of his intellectual property. I think that part is reasonable (to an extent) since he is protecting his ideas. What I think is unreasonable is the fact that he requires all students to sign these NDAs, and offers no alternative presentation of the subject matter. Thus if a student does not wish to sign, they end up missing out on lectures that they have already paid the university to receive, and they have a potential of missing out on graded content that is "covered" by the material that the professor is restricting. Students have no notice that this will happen prior to entering the class and thus are forced to sign if the don't want to withdraw.

• undergraduate
• intellectual-property

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Do you have access to the NDA? Do you know what does it cover, exactly? When I joined my research institution I had to sign an NDA, and so do every student or employee that comes, which is preventing us from disclosing other people's unpublished research. If the NDA covered the unpublished research taught in the course, it would be very different.

Visiting prof tried to do the same, somehow the department didnt like it, somehow the 2 semester visit became a 1 semester visit only. So talk to the right person (Graduate advisor?) at your varsity. Just ask them if they think this required document is appropriate.

18 Answers 18

No. It’s not appropriate and this is an obvious, blatant abuse of authority. I have a word in mind to describe this professor, but unfortunately am not free to disclose it as I am under an NDA. (It starts with an “i” and ends with a “t”).

Edit: to those asking “why not?”: teaching the class is the professor’s job. He is literally (in the literal sense of “literally”) required to teach the lecture and to allow any registered student who isn’t being disruptive to attend it, without setting any preconditions. And of course this swearing of students to legally binding secrecy is even more absurd than other types of conditions, considering the students are there to acquire knowledge they’ll need to use later in their studies and career. The whole “I’ll teach you but you have to promise not to tell anyone about it” thing reads like something straight out of Catch-22.

While I wouldn't contest the main direction of the answer (not appropriate), the argument that students are entitled to learn and the NDA wouldn't permit them to use their knowledge hinges on the formulation of the NDA. It may be solely focussed on the how they learned not the what they learned, i.e. structure of the course, examples, etc. This would leave the students free to apply their domain knowledge, it would just limit them in re-teaching it as in they could not do it the same way.

@FrankHopkins in a narrow technical sense you may be correct. However, the idea that students would need to carefully separate the how from the what whenever they are applying the knowledge they learned or sharing that knowledge with someone, at risk of legal sanction and into the indefinite future, clearly places a heavy and undue burden on the students. Quite simply, NDAs have no place in a teaching environment regardless of their scope. As someone said in another answer, NDAs are antithetical to the very mission of teaching, which is to share knowledge.

@FrankHopkins " It may be solely focussed on the how they learned not the what they learned, i.e. structure of the course, examples, etc. " Aah, yes the - I've perfected the ultimate method of teaching, so my feedback might give me $50 more per year, so I wont tell anyone. This argument is silly beyond recognition.

@FrankHopkins the how is just as much part of the knowledge being transferred by teaching as the what. A teacher's job is to teach and one of the most important parts of teaching is precisely teaching how to teach. If you want to keep your teaching tricks secret, then don't teach!

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He may or may not be "protecting his ideas", but, in fact, teaching has as a goal the dissemination of ideas. If one wants to keep secrets or have proprietary stuff, don't pretend to teach a friggin' class! :)

What's worse, there's nothing stopping the professor from just teaching the class without using it as time to plan his book.

I don't know what your university regulations are, but there must be something in there that says that a professor cannot refuse teaching to their students, no matter what you sign or don't sign.

It's time to ask your student union/representatives/whatever you have to reach out to your dean and demand a different solution.

While I agree this NDA sounds utterly inappropriate, I don’t think university regulations are likely to have such a blanket prohibition. There are certainly classes where students are required to sign some kind of agreement: e.g. medical students meeting patients must commit to respecting their privacy, students in certain practical lab classes must sign safety/responsibility agreements, and in some research-based classes students may see confidential data. What I’d expect regulations to require is that the professor needs a legitimate educational reason to require an NDA or similar.

It’s called a syllabus, which is a legally binding contract. If the prof failed to achieve the contract, ie learning outcomes, they open a liability.

@PLL in the cases you mention surely it's the university which requires those agreements to be signed, and consequently the university which refuses to allow the professor to teach them if they don't sign, as opposed to the professor personally refusing to teach.

@EspeciallyLime +1 Its not even the university, its public laws and regulations about patient rights, data security or workplace safety. And research is not teaching. The student can always choose another project. Probably unfunded. ;)

The instructor is paid to teach, not write a book. If the book gets in the way of his/her teaching duties, either s/he give up teaching OR give up the book. Moreover, I doubt this instructor can prevent random people walking in his/her classroom so the whole NDA is 100%-proof shhhhhhhhugar.

Writing books and other scholarly publications may very well be part of the professor's required duties, and it is reasonable to try to balance such activities with teaching. But I agree that I don't see how the NDA is necessary. Also, in a reasonably small class, it is perfectly easy for a professor to notice random people and ask them to leave.

No, but you can stop lecturing when they come in, ask them to leave, and resume when they're gone. Then they won't have seen/heard any significant amount of the NDA material. I fully agree that the NDA is a bad idea and inappropriate, but I don't think this specific issue is what undermines it.

@TommiBrander Looks like a minced oath, representing someone saying "100-proof sh-" with the intention of saying a vulgar word, but then hesitating for a few moments before deciding to finish the phrase using the word "sugar" instead of the word that was intended originally.

@ZeroTheHero: (1) Money, I assume. (2) Our students are commonly confused enough that sometimes they sit in the wrong classroom for an entire semester and then lodge a complaint at the end. U.S. culture is very "anyone can come regardless of qualifications as long as they pay us".

It probably depends on where you are, but the University, where I used to teach (and to my knowledge it is quite standard here in Europe), had it in the contract that everything you did while working for the university belonged to the university. That means that the professor can't exclude members of the university to the knowledge he acquired while working in the university.

Furthermore, having lectures which often require to be uploaded on-line would serve as a basis to protect his rights on the ideas (for patents, books, etc.).

NDAs are required to protect your know-how and patent-able ideas. No book ideas. Uploading the course on-line, would allow him to actually use his ideas and prevent patents to block him.

While this is common practice (intellectual property being assigned to the institution), it doesn't mean that students have any rights to that intellectual property.

I believe there's a question or two around addressing this ownership question. At my school (which I believe is typical for the US) instructors own the course materials they create. You can freely take it with you to your new job at the next school for example. Though the school may get some kind of license to use it too. To cover them if, for example, they want to video your lectures and keep them. Other forms of IP (i.e. patents) may be handled very differently of course, because they're worth something.

IANAL, but this NDA is likely not worth the paper it's printed on.

1. An NDA requiring students not to disclose information they were taught in class will be likely found onerous by a reasonable court, because it clearly conflicts with the purpose of teaching and lessens the value of education received, and invalidated if the professor ever tries to enforce it.
2. An NDA can only be applied to information which is held confidential by the owner. A reasonable court will likely rule that information presented as a part of curriculum in a school loses its confidential status, thereby invalidating the NDA.
3. If the judge has a sense of humor (which is admittedly rare), they may rule that taking the exam on the course constitutes compelled disclosure, which also nullifies NDA protection.

I don't advise you to sign this agreement, but if you already did, there's not much to worry about really.

What is it, exactly, that the Professor is trying to protect with this NDA? Is it the course subject matter itself, the method of teaching or the specific text of the course materials (lecture notes/slides)?

The first case would be clearly nonsensical. If he is teaching a University course, the subject matter is almost certainly generally-accepted mainstream science that was likely published many years ago and so is in the public domain anyway. So, it is unlikely that he has any particular claim to the subject matter (unless he has single-handedly developed all of the theory for that entire field). In any case, this goes against the main goal of academic research, which is to publish research findings to add to the cumulative knowledge of humanity, not to keep them secret for one's own benefit.

In the second case, can a teaching method be considered Intellectual Property? It seems highly unlikely he would be able to apply for a patent for a teaching method. Patents are typically reserved for more concrete inventions and innovations. Besides a patent, the only way it could be considered intellectual property would be for him to intend to keep the teaching method secret. However, his intention to publish a book about it would seem to contradict that. Also, as with the first point, this seems to go against the grain of academia, since teaching methods are also an active area of published research.

For the third case, as alephzero points out in the question comments, the specific text of lecture notes, presentation slides and/or a book can be protected by copyright. However, the Professor should not require students to sign an NDA to do this - simply make it clear to the students that the course materials are subject to copyright. These things are already protected, without the need for an NDA.

In summary, the course materials are protected by copyright anyway, and it seems very unlikely that any NDA would be enforceable to protect the subject matter or teaching method. So, you probably don't have too much to worry about by signing it.

If the teaching method was truly innovative and could be described in the manner a patent requires of e.g. an industrial manufacturing process, yes, it certainly could be patented.

@Nij ok, that's interesting. My understanding was that abstract ideas and concepts cannot be patented. Is there any precedent for a teaching method being granted a patent?

A teaching method is not an "abstract idea or concept" - it's a real process that is used to achieve some real outcome. It may be underpinned by a lot of theory, and the application of specific theory in a certain way may be part of the process, and if this theory is well-known or obvious it will probably reduce support for the method's novelty.

That's absolutely nonsense. Patents apply to anything that meet the requirements. The closest that you might call "only to commercial application" in the USA is the utility requirement, which doesn't involve commercialisability, and in the EU only industrial use, which teaching (the education industry) is. @Karl

@Time4Tea the professor’s desire to keep his teaching methods secret, and whether that desire is based on a “valid reason” or not, are irrelevant issues. The professor is not an independent agent who can do whatever he wants in his classroom. He is an employee of the university and is required to teach the class and allow any registered student to attend, period. The discussion of patentability of teaching methods may be interesting but it is beside the point, and does not undermine or have much bearing on the other answers.

This NDA paranoia contradicts the very idea of teaching. Imagine that some company hires you to do some job. And at some moment you discover that that job requires you to use knowledge given to you on that NDA-protected lecture. What must you do? You must tell your customers: "Please wait, my NDA expires in 16 months?"

In addition, I think that the professor over-estimates the readiness of the society to accept his ideas, whatever they are. For example, Java 8 introduced streams. By that time, that technique was known for more than 2 decades.

I do not know what he proposed, but I can tell you what he will get in response:

1. it is too exotic
2. it is not needed
3. it is too complex
4. who will use it? it is too different from what people are taught
5. there is no practical use
6. the problem that it solves is no problem
7. the problem that it solves already is solved with existing methods
8. no, I do not see any advantage
9. why did not you use the traditional notation?
10. it does not work in the general case
11. the part X of your proposal is described as bad practice in the book Y
12. you said the word X, how your work is related to Y X Z? (If they are not related, why did you use the word X that already has a meaning?)

On the other hand, it is possible that his contribution is just the organization of the material (this may range from explanation in simple words to things like vector/matrix maths, a notation that really simplified thinking). In this case, a NDA on the way of thinking is just unfair to the students.

Either way, there should be no NDA. But what you can do may depend on your country.

A non-disclosure agreement only protects information that is not generally known. I seriously doubt that standard lectures can be protected information. I don't see how an NDA is appropriate in the case outlined in your question.

Why would you pay for information that you are then not allowed to use?

Management: "This student says you walked him out of your class, what happened?"
Professor: "He refused to sign my non-disclosure agreement"

I don't think the university will take very kindly to your professor's arrangement. Unless he has received prior clearance from the university to do this, I can see it getting him into trouble.

One of the main purposes of teaching is to prepare students for research or real-world by presenting the latest ideas, methodologies, and tools. If you have something that you intend to present it in a book or a journal paper, just do not teach it yet.

Perhaps the professor is protecting his lecture notes before publishing them as a book. While this is reasonable as the OP suggested, presenting no other alternative is not acceptable. As a teacher, your first responsibility is to teach and not write books. If you want to protect your material, you should adapt your lecture notes. It's just lazy to provide no alternatives and ask students for signing NDAs.

Based on your first line, for a moment, I thought you were going to talk about how this prepares the students for crappy NDA requirements in their real-world lives ;)

It is not appropriate to withhold material from a student for failure to sign an NDA. That said, it is appropriate to remind the students of the value of intellectual property, and that they are not the copyright holders of the provided material.

By way of explanation -- the work at issue is protected by copyright. There may be some debate about who is entitled to the fruits of that copyright, the author or the institution, but many US institutions will cede to the author. In any case, it is NOT the student.

The way this is handled at my institution is that it is covered in the Academic Honesty policy.

The sharing or distribution of course materials for purposes of giving or gaining unfair advantage in a course is prohibited. Students must further respect the requirements of copyright protection for materials that are made available for instructional purposes.

All the students read, and sign, the academic honesty policy upon entrance, and generally receive reminders at each course on the first meeting. Also, if the prof has any non-obvious course policies on honesty, such as how students are allowed to collaborate on teamwork, this is also shared on day one, as well as in the syllabus.

Thus, any unapproved sharing of lecture or other material is treated like any other violation of academic honesty policies. There is no "Cease and Desist" to the student (but any site hosting the material might get a request to take it down, and if non-responsive, might well get a Cease and Desist, or it's equivalent), but there may certainly be ramifications. For example, if the student has a previous major violation on record, such as cheating on an exam, a case involving unauthorized sharing might even result in separation (though a lowering of the course grade or failure in the course might be the more likely scenario).

I don't know that this would preempt the professor from pursuing independent legal action. For example, if a professor spent five years writing a textbook for the publisher, and found the entire preprint online prior to publication, and had real financial damage, I don't know if university policy would preclude a copyright violation lawsuit.

To summarize, the work is already protected by copyright, whether an NDA is signed or not. Asking students for an NDA, and refusing to distribute material to students unwilling to sign, is inappropriate. Some universities (maybe even "many") include copyright violation in their academic honesty policy, and students might experience penalties for traceable violations. There is also a possibility that students may be subject to the same legal actions that any copyright violator is exposed to.