Still no cure for unwoven underwater baskets.

My college's career center emailed me a survey about being employed. I used a shiat ton of N/As.

Rant_Casey's_Rabies_Buffet: Weak. No "7 Ideas that Shook the Universe."

/can I get some kent state love and / or hate?



is that Nixon coming?
/hot like soldiers gunning us down

susansto-helit: Dude, I'd totally take the tree climbing class.

Watch out for wolverines.

Indolent:
There's an art of walking class??!! What's next?

From the looks of it, it's a philosophy class, with the main difference being that the students are walking instead of sitting.

I once took an elective called "Interesting and Edible Meats"

Took MUS 354 during my undergrad....twice. History of heavy metal and history of the Beatles.

/Both were online
//Arizona State Grad
///Win or lose we still booze

At least 4 of those courses looked legitimately great.

University today isn't a joke, it's that previously (say 40 years ago) the majority of graduates were either from independently wealthy families, or were sufficiently bright and motivated to make it into school from tougher surroundings. The result was: after school, they either found work or had sufficient resources to not really need to work (including nepotistic sinecures).

There have always been bird courses in university, since the days of Newton at Oxford. Art history, phys ed...there was a time when Shakespeare himself was considered on the level with prostitutes, and his works were viewed as vulgar, like some form of Real Housewives of the Early 1600s.

But it does make us grads feel a bit smug to give the "it was harder in my day speech." I think it's one of the perks of being an alum.

My college (Emory) offered a "Music of the Beatles" class taught by...wait for it... DR. JOHN LENNON. How badass is that?

Most of those were lame.

Where's the Smash Bros. Theory class?

skinnycatullus: Yeah, there's that. I made an 88 on an exam last week and the next class the instructor was going on about how horribly everyone did and if we do better on the next one, she may drop that exam grade.

There's a great reason for that. As opposed to years ago, student evaluations play a major role in tenure and promotion decisions. A professor hands out bad (i.e. fair) grades at the risk of his or own career.

I went to college in the mid-90s and came back as a graduate student several years ago. There has been a profound change in student attitude. It's much more of a "consumer culture" now, with students feeling like they are customers rather than students. In a sense they are customers, of course, but the difference is that it used to be "give me what's good for me or what I need" and now it's more "give me what I want."

Incidentally, a lot of "silly courses" can be explained by the fact that many universities make academic departments compete for funds based on the number of students they serve. Behind the "Star Trek" class, I see the likelihood of a straight-up philosophy department fighting for financial survival, and needing to finance their class in, say, Epistemology (where real scholars read real, difficult books) with a freshman survey with a cute conceit-- and hope they hit the jackpot by getting block-enrolled by a fraternity.

Walker: Semicolons should be outlawed.

Half-assed punctuation.

Indolent: There's an art of walking class??!! What's next?

Fluid: From the looks of it, it's a philosophy class, with the main difference being that the students are walking instead of sitting.

I was surprised to see a nearby college on the list. Nevertheless, on the plus side, Centre College has a very beautiful campus. A friend and his fiancee had their engagement pictures taken there.

mavrickatubc: But it does make us grads feel a bit smug to give the "it was harder in my day speech." I think it's one of the perks of being an alum.

As a relatively recent grad ('05), I think it in some cases was a lot harder "back in the day". I had a chance to look at average GPAs at my alma mater and they've been creeping upwards for decades. It seems that in 1960 college was (relatively) inexpensive, and it wasn't expected that everyone would finish. A 3.0 was an accomplishment, and if 20% of the people failed out, so be it. Now a 3.0 is below average, a year of school costs as much as a new Lexus, and the only people who fail out are total farkups. So while the quality of education is probably better for students willing to put in the work, the minimum required to skate by and get a degree is much, much lower because it's not acceptable for 20% of the kids to fail out any more.

baka-san: Fluid: From the looks of it, it's a philosophy class, with the main difference being that the students are walking instead of sitting.

Also, it's only a three week course.

I have class today(39) and I'm really getting tired of the young un's

And hell, most of them are in their early to mid 20's.

But they act like 8th graders sometimes.

Just tell 'em to get off your lawn.

WhyteRaven74: The garbage and tree climbing classes are actually useful. The garbage class as an end to itself, the tree climbing can be very useful for lots of people, like people studying plants, animals etc.

Also, Philosophy and Star Trek doesn't sound bad, plenty in Star Trek that can be the start for in depth discussion. Which is kind of the point in philosophy classes.

Deep discussion is not the point of philosophy class.

I can't believe there is an actual underwater basket weaving course. When I was in college, we used to refer to all of the stupid electives as underwater basket weaving.

And these precious snowflakes wonder why I won't hire them. Sorry kid, but if you did not take Calc III, Advanced Algorithms, and some form of Advanced Data Structures your degree does not qualify you to work here.

No, Web Page Basics, Intro to HTML, and Javascript I does not make you a highly qualified candidate.

chestylarue747: I can't believe there is an actual underwater basket weaving course. When I was in college, we used to refer to all of the stupid electives as underwater basket weaving.

I think somebody was trying to be funny, and it just got out of hand.

What a bunch of psycobabble

FTFA ...explores the social justice issues related to environmental matters, such as the fact that landfills and recycling centers are frequently located in poorer neighborhoods ....


Ok - lets force all the landfills and recycling centers to be on the most expensive land anywhere. then lets sit around and pick our nose and wonder why it is so expensive to recycle or throw anything away.

...and that American Indian tribes, as sovereign nations, can store nuclear waste for the U.S. government.

So lets tell those sovereign nations what they can and cannot do with their land...after all they are children. We have to take care of them. Just like we have for the past 300+ years.

Jeezes.

/ did not read past the first page.

I took Alcohol 101 as an elective at the University of Florida.

Each week he'd lecture for an hour on a different type of alcohol and then we'd spend an hour drinking it. Beer was by far the best week.

I actually learned a lot about history and how all that stuff is made. I also learned that drinking a bottle of scotch in one night makes for a really bad Tuesday.

At Purdue I took 82 classes in 19 different departments so I am getting a kick.... One of those happened to be wine appreciation. It was probably the most useful and best class I took. It was more about wine growing, culture, farming, rather than about tasting wine. It inspired me to start my own home brewing operation. That being said only one of those classes (the maple syrup one) I can see as a legit course since it is important agriculture industry. Hell even Purdue had a bee keeping class. (I wish I took it)

log_jammin: was there ever a time when people went to college to learn about a topic or something that interested them or they found useful and didn't care about a degree?

Yes, but then colleges realized that they could attract more students if they pushed the meme that an individual with a bachelors degree makes a million dollars more over their life time then one without.

Couple that with the dumbing down of high school, the gutting of vocational programs, the easy access to student loans and bachelors programs became job mills. Those who really want to study a subject go get a PHD or Masters.

skinnycatullus: College is a joke these days because the farking students are lazy, poorly prepared, and can't look away from their phones or facebook long enough to pay attention in class.

/35-yr-old taking some undergrad computer classes
//off my lawn and take your got-damn iphone with you, punk

RagingLeonard: As a 41 year old college student, I welcome those students. They make my B average shoot to the top of the class.

As a 31 year old back in College I'm getting a kick from your replies and agree with both your statements. About half my class is composed of 'not kids' and we're definitely the majority of upper median. I'm looking forward to second semester and onward due to what I anticipate to be a sharp drop in enrollment as the less serious students are washed out.

/was once of those kids, hence why I'm back in college at 31 :P

bubbaprog: Physics of Harry Potter, too. Again, it's not about Harry Potter, it's just using Harry Potter instead of, I dunno, roller coasters, or glasses of water, or the other myriad physics cliches.

Gauge operations don't work at Hogwarts

also, what ever happened to making these courses "independent learning"
I took a wine making class, but it had no credit associated with it.
I just wanted to learn how to make hooch.

bubbaprog: Every single one of those classes has academic merit. Or do you idiots not realize that we explain how the world works by developing frameworks then applying those frameworks to elements of culture?

Philosophy of Star Trek is not about Star Trek. It's about basic philosophical concepts, many of which can be described through the action or dialogue of Star Trek. Since Star Trek is a creation of human beings, we can draw conclusions about the culture from which it developed and assume its role as a commentary upon that culture.

Physics of Harry Potter, too. Again, it's not about Harry Potter, it's just using Harry Potter instead of, I dunno, roller coasters, or glasses of water, or the other myriad physics cliches.

Stanford used to have a class on Black Hair.

You standard grumpy fans of old dead white men thought it was ludicrous. However, it turns out that you can examine a good deal of recent black/white social relations through the lens of whether black people were trying to look white or extenuating their racial identity or making other statements.

The title of a course is not the content. And those who treat their education as nothing but technical (read engineers) are certainly missing out.

I took #10 through iTunes U and now do some iPhone programming professionally. Why again is that a joke?

I took the tree climbing class. For my final, I got the Larch. The Larch. Can you believe it? That's usually a 400 level tree climbing tree. I said "Hey teacher, why do I have to climb a Larch? Lenny got a pine tree." He said "You showed advanced skills back in the cedar part of the syllabus. Now get your shapely ass (*) up that Larch."

Well, I climbed it straight to the top. I didn't do any swing outs or leg grabs. I knew the cones would be a problem so I stayed closer to the trunk and got Larch sap all over my Members Only jacket. I also nearly lost the onion that had been tied to my waist. If that had happened the teacher would've flunked me.

The teacher gave me a solid B. I decided to give up tree climbing as a career and went in to microcomputers, the computer having been invented just a fortnight before by Thomas A. Edison-Macintosh.

(*) Like my hair, it is no longer there.