US professor hid cash prize in syllabus; any student who read it could win $50: Report

Students are usually presented with a syllabus detailing the contents of their courses at the start of each new college semester. But do students really read it thoroughly?

A music professor based in Tennessee, United States orchestrated a fun experiment to find an answer to this question, with a $50 (Rs 3,800) reward. The answer he got wasn't very surprising, as he had not expected his students to go through the syllabus in detail. At the end of the college semester, the $50 reward remained unclaimed. 

What was the experiment?

Kenyon Wilson, an associate head of performing arts at the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga decided to include an "Easter egg" in his music seminar class's syllabus, CNN reported. The hint read: "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 and ..."  

The hint would have led students to a locker containing a $50 bill, which would have been given away to the first student who claimed it. However, when Wilson went to check the locker at the end of the semester, he found that the bill was still there.

"No one reads the syllabus, according to academic lore. It's like when you are installing software and everyone says they have read the terms and conditions even though no one has," he was quoted as saying by CNN. 

"My semester-long experiment has come to an end. At the start of the term, I placed $50 in one of our lockers and included the locker number & combination in my syllabus for a class with over 70 enrolled. Today I retrieved the unclaimed treasure. What academic shenanigans should I try next? (sic)," Wilson posted on Facebook earlier this month. 

Wilson left a note inside the locker with $50 reward

"There is a template that stays the same every time. The institution requires that we provide a lot of legal information towards the end. However, on the first day of class, I informed students that certain things had changed and that they should read it," the music professor told CNN.

Wilson further informed that he left a note inside the locker as he placed the reward. "Congratulations! Please write your name and the date you found it so I can know who found it," the note read.

Wilson checked the locker at the end of semester exams only to see that none of the students could claim the reward. 

(Image: @KenyonWilson/Facebook)