Curriculum of Dunces

America's dumbest college courses

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(Photo: Viorika Prikhodko)


What's that rotting smell? Why, it's America's post-secondary education system, of course! And as academic standards decay, professors are increasingly loading the menu with junk food.

Radar has already crowned the worst colleges in America, and now we turn our attention to specific academic miscarriages. Behold, the stupidest college courses in all the land:


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"Arguing with Judge Judy: Popular 'Logic' on TV Judge Shows"
UC Berkeley

Really, Berkeley? Forty-four Nobel laureates and this is the best you could do? Nothing says academic rigor quite like the hallowed chambers of Judge Judy's plywood courtroom set. The crotchety gavel-cracker's syndicated daytime television show serves as the source material for this rhetoric seminar, though we assume her best-selling book Don't Pee on My Leg and Tell Me It's Raining will make for fascinating supplemental reading.

Students parse the subtle reasoning of typical Judge Judy guests, most of whom apparently never graduated from high school. "For example," reads the syllabus, "when asked 'Did you hit the plaintiff?' respondents often say, 'If I woulda hit him, he'd be dead!'" Next stop, Harvard Law.
 


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