A professor hid clues for cash prize on campus. All the students had to do was read the syllabus.

The students were amused to find out about the unusual test that their professor had come up with.

UPDATED OCT 23, 2024

Representational image of students in a library and cash hidden in the locker. (Cover image sources: Photo by Albert Hutzler Reading Room for Getty Images and screenshot from a Facebook post by Kenyon Wilson)

Reading the syllabus could get mundane for students, but teachers need to make sure that each of them does it thoroughly. That's why Kenyon Wilson, the associate head of performing arts at the University of Tennessee, put an Easter egg in the syllabus for his music seminar class to see if students are paying attention. The professor left a reward for the students, just to see which ones were thorough enough to notice it.

Representative image | Getty Images | Stock photo — Representative image of students running | (Image source: Getty Images | Stock photo)

Getting Creative With Tests

Wilson tested the 71 students in his class by leaving a clue to a hidden $50 bill. He later told CNN that every year, the documents remained pretty much the same but COVID protocols allowed him to add something new. Among the instructions, Wilson added some additional info and wrote, "Thus (free to the first who claims; locker one hundred forty-seven; combination fifteen, twenty-five, thirty-five), students may be ineligible to make up classes."

Inside the locker, he placed a $50 bill and a note for the lucky finder that read, "Congrats! Please leave your name and date so I know who found it." He shared that on the first day of the class, he even told the students to make sure that they read the syllabus and all the instructions thoroughly.

Wilson waited till the final exams to go back and check the locker but was disappointed to find out that the hidden treasure remained unclaimed for the entire semester. He shared this underwhelming discovery through a Facebook post.

“It's an academic trope that no one reads the syllabus,” Wilson told CNN. He compared the information in the syllabus to the 'terms and conditions' on websites that people simply agree to without even bothering to read. "I know my students read, and I don't expect them to religiously go through word-by-word, but if they did, I wanted to reward them," he said.

Amused and Guilty

One of Wilson's students, Haley Decker told CNN that she thought the experiment was "hilarious." However, she admitted that every student in the class was guilty "of having absolutely no idea" that the clue was in there. "This class typically is the same format every semester, so students know what to expect and don't take the time to read the syllabus like we should," she told the outlet.

After the experiment ended, Decker told all of her friends about it in a group chat, and they were amused as well. The students admitted that they had realized the importance of reading the syllabus and taking such documents seriously. This made Wilson think that next year, he will perhaps have the "most well-read syllabi ever.”

Wilson is not the only professor who has conducted experiments with college students. Back in 2021, an economics professor failed all of her students in an experiment to teach them an important lesson on 'socialism'. According to the details shared in a Facebook post, which is now deleted, the students of the class insisted that socialism worked and it was a great equalizer for society.

Thus, the professor started averaging out the grades of all the students eventually failing them all. This was to teach the students that socialism would also fail in the practical world like they all did.