Are you old enough to have received tuition bills for your kid’s education that roll your eyes to the back of your cruller? I am, and I have. I recall getting bills from daughter’s college (a small fancy schmancy college that serves Designer Water) for about a zillion dollars per credit for a course that was called something like “The Medium of Movement.” Huh???

As such, I pity the parents of a kid at Centre College of Kentucky who get their next tuition bill for a zillion dollars so that their freshman kid can take a course called “The Café and Public Life, ” which is described as follows:

The café has long been a storied place for creating public life, from convivial social groups to intellectual salons to revolutionary cells. We will study how the café is a “third place” – not home, not work – where people from different social groups can meet and mix. Caffeine, especially in coffee, tea, and chocolate, has fueled a modern public sphere that promotes hard work and clear thinking. We will make several field trips to different kinds of cafés to see for ourselves how they can be incubators of public life, and to actively create critical discourse ourselves by talking to café regulars.

When I was a freshman in college, my courses were as follows:

English Composition
Biology
Advanced German
Psychology
History of Western Civilization

There may have been one more that I cannot recall at the moment. I do, however, remember that those courses kept my ass glued to a desk chair for five hours per night after the last class of the day. Taking a course that involved hanging out in a coffee joint was not an option.

Would I have signed up for a course that involved sitting around, drinking coffee and grooving on the ambience? You bet your ass. Would I have learned anything worth a shit? As my Constitutional Law Professor from Maine used to say, “To ahhhsk the question, is to ahhhnswer it.” NO!!!!

Mr. Scriblerus, of The Idiom, has tracked down the details of this edumacational joke, and Black Hole of tuition dollars, including the most interesting course syllabus. Go check it out.