BTTT
This is all Bush’s fault!
Unpaid for tax cuts.
Illegal war.
whatever - not our fault...you stupid racist hatemongers better not vote us out of office!
/sarc
“#20 Back in 1980, the United States imported approximately 37 percent of the oil that we use. Now we import nearly 60 percent of the oil that we use”.
...one of the more alarming IMHO. Thanks to the dems and the EPA for this little ditty!
Invest in lead. With lead you can buy food, get cash, protect your property and clean up the gene pool when the sh*t hits the fan.
This blame falls squarely on politicians who have squandered tax receipts in order to get re-elected year after year. And now Obama is drunk with power and thinks more spending will get HIM out of HIS jam.
Only a radical and massive spending freeze, gov’t lay-offs, and reduction of taxes will point us in the right direction.
I am will to bet you a lot of those janitors with PhDs are from the humanities, in particular ethic studies, film studies,…basket weaving courses… or non-economics social sciences, eg., sociology, anthropology of never heard of countries….
I can’t even count the number of useless courses our colleges are teaching nowadays and charging exorbitant tuition fees for.
Just look at a sample of what they’re teaching in our top colleges in the USA...
http://www.onlinecolleges.net/2009/02/25/the-15-strangest-college-courses-in-america/
College is viewed by many people these days as a diploma factory. You show up go to certain classes in a certain order, and eventually receive a diploma. There’s not a lot of love for learning for learning’s sake anymore. But that hasn’t stopped many colleges and online colleges from offering plenty of quirky unique classes that go over non standard educational topics. A lot of the odd courses we found sound like lots of fun, but with tuition costs skyrocketing is it really worth it to spend thousands of dollars on fun diversions? Read on and decide.
15. Arguing with Judge Judy: Popular ‘Logic’ on TV Judge Shows
University of California, Berkeley.
Not quite what one would expect, the professor of this course emphasizes repeatedly in the course listing that this class is “NOT a course about law or “legal reasoning.” It is instead an exploration of logical fallacies that are often presented by defendants and plaintiffs on court television shows like Judge Judy and The People’s Court.
Seems right up the alley of most college students, as they are squarely in the demographic of afternoon television programming (which also targets the elderly and unemployed).
14. Underwater Basket Weaving
University of California, San Diego
The course that is used interchangeably with “waste of time college class”, but surprisingly it actually exists, both at UC San Diego and at Reed College in Portland, Oregon. According to Wikipedia anyway. Underwater basket weaving involves making wicker baskets by dipping reeds or stalks of plants into water, and letting them soak. Full body immersion is optional I suppose.
13. Learning From YouTube
Pitzer College.
This college course literally involves watching YouTube videos to study the impact on culture that the video sharing site has had. Students also upload their own videos to the class YouTube channel. The teacher started the course after being “underwhelmed by the quality of the video content on the site”. You can actually see some of the classes if you’re so inclined, here’s 10 minutes from their November 16, 2007 meeting.
12. Philosophy and Star Trek
Georgetown University
Philosophy classes often use pop culture to start discussion, there are even plenty of books out there with similar themes as this college class (here’s Seinfeld and Philosophy for instance), but still, when it comes down to it, this course and the philosophical under trappings are just being used as an excuse to talk a little Star Trek. Not that there’s anything wrong with that.
11. The Art of Walking
Centre College
This might sound like the epitome of college fluff, but it’s actually a class dealing with Immanuel Kant’s “Critique of Judgment”. The course offers a mixture of lectures and walks around the Danville, Kentucky area including strolls through “nature preserves, battlefields, cemeteries, the nearby Shaker Village, campuses and farms”. Students are also given freelance walking assignments in addition to more traditional college work like reading and term papers.
10. Daytime Serials: Family and Social Roles
University of Wisconsin
While I’m sure most guys would rather gouge out their own eyes than take a course on soap operas, this is probably right up many young women’s alley. This is part of UW’s Women’s Studies program, which I think is kind of unfortunate given the view some people have of that major already. Talk about giving them more ammunition. The course isn’t really about soap operas per se, it’s actually about the role they play in family and work lives of the people who watch them.
9. Joy of Garbage
Santa Clara University
The Joy of Garbage is a Santa Clara University course that actually deals with real science through the lens of garbage. Students study decomposition, what makes soil rot, the chemicals that give garbage an unpleasant odor, and they also learn about sustainability when it comes to the things we throw away. Classes don’t just study household garbage either, there’s also a section on nuclear waste. And topping things off there are even field trips, with students visiting local sanitation plants and landfills.
8. The Science of Superheroes
University of California at Irvine
Students at UC Irvine can learn about physics by using familiar superhero icons such as Spider-Man, Superman, Wonder Woman and Batman. The professor teaches the physics of flying and fluid dynamics using Superman as his example, and the students also learn about super strong spider silk as used by Spider-Man. The professor explains it saying “It gives me a chance to talk about real science but in a context that is very familiar to the students”.
7. Zombies in Popular Media
Columbia College, Chicago
Here’s one I’d have to consider signing up for, the history of zombies in popular media. Lest you think it’s just about zombie movies, it should be emphasized that the course also covers the history of voodoo in Hait, and video games like Resident Evil as well as zombies in cinema. >>> Course Listing
6. The Science of Harry Potter
Frostburg State University
Not only does Frostburg State offer a course on the science of Harry Potter – it’s an honors course. The class discusses topics such as whether or not Fluffy the three headed dog could be explained by genetic engineering or if antigravity research could actually produce a flying broomstick. The course is modeled after (and uses as a textbook) the book “The Science of Harry Potter: How Magic Really Works,” by Roger Highfield. The class is geared towards non-science majors and, probably not surprisingly, there is no lab work.
5. Cyberporn and Society
State University of New York at Buffalo
Students taking this course watch porn. At school. There are actually quite a few porn courses in the US, as outlined in this Time article, including a class at Northwestern that deals with obscenity where the professor screens the Italian movie Saló, a film that has a great argument for being the sickest movie ever made. Seeing it in a college course would be extremely bizarre.
4. Simpsons and Philosophy
University of California-Berkeley
This one is probably predictable as you’ve got a twenty year old show with plenty of rich fairly intellectual material and a main character with the name of “Homer”. UC-Berkeley claims this isn’t at all a dumbed down class, but a fairly rigorous philosophical course. The text of the class is the book “The Simpsons and Philosophy: The D’oh of Homer,” edited by William Irwin and features weighty questions such as “Can Nietzsche’s rejection of traditional morality justify Bart’s bad behavior?”.
3. Far Side Entomology
Oregon State
The comic strip “The Far Side” featured a rich universe filled with interesting animals and bugs. Far Side Entomology professor Michael Burgett uses the comic strip as a teaching tool to explore interactions between humans and insects. About the course, Burgett says “The anthropomorphism in the cartoons makes an immediate connection between insects and people … Students take those connections farther, connecting to ideas and relationships they wouldn’t have imagined in a straight systematics course.”
2. Myth and Science Fiction: Star Wars, The Matrix, and Lord of the Rings
Centre College
Tiny Centre College makes their second appearance on our list, this time with a class focusing on contemporary epics. Students not only study Stars Wars, The Matrix, and The Lord Of The Rings, they also discuss television shows like Star Trek, Stargate, Dr. Who, The X-Files, and Babylon
5. The course weds these modern day tales to classical myths, showing that many of the narrative devices and patterns employed then are still used in today’s epics.
1. The Strategy of StarCraft
University of California, Berkley
I’m sure that in South Korea one could major in StarCraft, but it’s a bit strange seeing a college course about the game here in the US. The class uses StarCraft to teach the art of war, discussing strategy and tactics in the famous game. This is actually a student led program in Berkeley’s alternative education program, but we give it major props for creativity.
There should be a buyer beware warning on all those non-quantitative majors that make people into sophisticated malcontent complainers!
Slightly off topic but 17 million times the cost of four years of college plus the opportunity cost of not having worked during those four years is a lot of money down the drain. The higher education bubble must be about to burst. Noone can continue to justify the costs of 4 year degrees in Critical Queer Theory, Marxists Womyn's Theory, etc.
I only had to get to #4 before something didn’t pass the smell test...
#4 In the United States today, there are 5,057 janitors with Ph.D.’s, other doctorates, or professional degrees.
Where (and how) would one even presume to get such data??
Good comment on there...
Right now, about 75-80% of South Korean high school students enter a university. The 20% of Korean youth who do not attend university are mainly poor rural youth. Given the Koreans’ diligence, it is not surprising that the vast majority of university attendees also graduate, many with majors in scientific and engineering disciplines (“soft” degrees like marketing are not as popular here). This is a dedicated country.
But you know what? They can’t find jobs. It was reported in the Korean media a few weeks ago that according to the latest government figures, only half of recent Korean university graduates have found full-time work. Even the country’s best university, Seoul National, only has a 70% placement rate.
Now, Korea is experiencing an economic downturn, but not as bad as America’s. This employment issue has more to do with levels of training and subsequent levels of expectation. When a Korean student emerges from 20 years of intense study with a university degree, he or she reasonably expects a “good” job — which is to say, a well-paying professional or managerial job with good forward prospects. But here’s the problem. There does not exist, nor will there ever exist, a society in which 80% of the available jobs are professional, managerial, comfortable, and well-paid. No way. Korea has a number of other jobs, but some are low-paid service work, and many others — in factories, farming, fishing — are scorned as 3-D jobs (difficult, dirty, and dangerous). Educated Koreans don’t want them.
So the country is importing labor in droves — from China, Vietnam, Cambodia, the Philippines, even Uzbekistan. In the countryside, rural Korean men are having such a difficult time finding prospective wives to share their agricultural lifestyle that fully 40% of rural marriages are to poor women from those other Asian countries, who are brought in by match-makers and marriage brokers.
Since young Koreans almost invariably live at home until marriage, whether they are working or not, it is routine for the young unemployed to do so. Their parents, who have a lot invested in their children’s successful outcomes, discourage them from taking low-level, part-time, or contract work, even just to get a start in life. As is usually the case, the only way they can see of improving their lot is not by lowering their expectations, but by improving their qualifications: by scoring well on English tests, getting additional certificates, and so on. But everyone else is doing this, too, so the competitive field remains the same. What will happen to these youths? The more years they don’t work, the less chance there is that they ever will. They become tainted, and possibly a permanently disenfranchised minority.
This country, in short, has, with the best of intentions, educated itself into a corner.
mark
#13 The number of people unemployed in the state of California is approximately equivalent to the populations of Nevada, New Hampshire and Vermont combined.
Wow. That’s one hell of a tax hit for the state. Goodbye Cali.