http://blog.moviefone.com/2010/11/11/harry-potter-college-courses?a_dgi=aolshare_email

God I wish I went to one of these school.....

 

:awesome


But wait, some people may use that as leverage to add Twilight to the curricula too. FFFFFUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUU-

 

And after that Justin Bieber...:fire

 

As if I needed further proof that Yale is a monumental waste of money.

 

Too late, there was a Harry Potter/Twilight class at UW last quarter.

http://staff.washington.edu/changed/131/
http://staff.washington.edu/changed...ction-or-harry-potter-vs-twilight-engl-131-o/

 

Nah. Only if you spend four years at Yale (or any school) taking classes like that.

 

Hardly limited to Yale. There popping up all over the place now. La Salle (my school) offered one for a few years, as an honors program class no less.

 

The thing is, schools like Yale have such ridiculous financial aid programs that most people never pay anything close to the sticker price. The people who do pay sticker price are super rich, anyways.

Probably would have been more interesting than the 131 class I took, which was all about David Foster Wallace and descriptivism vs. prescriptivism. It was alright at first, but it wasn't a topic that could really sustain interest for an entire quarter.

 

I thought this was true for the longest time, then I saw my sister's Columbia tuition bill... We're a solidly middle class family and it turns out these kinds of families are the ones that end up getting shafted. Too rich to get much financial aid, and too poor to be able to afford the price tag independently. Sister's still going but you better believe she has some crazy student loans.

 

Always knew this was gonna happen. But introducing something I like so much into a college course will simply put me off it. Maybe its just me. Same thing happen with my C course. It was all good 'till a shitty teacher came and ruined the language for me. Now I make do with OOP.

 

So... kids are now so dumb that they need a child's fairytale to help them relate...I see.

Also what the fuck is up with the HP/Twilight buzz? They keep getting compared in everything, like they're some sort of genre equals or some shit. The site you linked to also has showdowns between HP characters and Twilight characters wtf? The HP universe is a rich sprawling creation, the Twiverse is basically the usual vampire fantasy watered down for Mormons and sixteen-year-old girls.

Vampires are only mentioned once in HP and in passing. Where's the fucking connection?

/rant

 

Their popularity/cult status.

 

@Agravaine, Teneges, Silverlasso: it's not so much the price, but more its status as an Ivy League institution.

Don't flaunt that status, and all that it entails, while at the same time embracing the kind of gimmicky, pandering tactics that are (sometimes) useful only to lower institutions with less engaged/focused individuals. If they're going to Yale, they don't need Harry Potter to hook them into actually learning about theology (or whatever), nor will they need to be spoon-fed the concepts via a simple Children's story.

Let them make those comparisons themselves in a final paper, after conducting a little thing I like to call research.

 

Except Harry Potter has fans of all ages and types, and Twilight is only loved by hordes of teenage girls and their moms. :l

 

You would be shocked at how many girls in their late teens and early twenties love Twilight. Probably the single most popular series among the womenfolk on my campus.

 

/filling filler

 

As interesting as the Harry Potter universe is, I would much rather take a course on Russian literature. The Swarthmore prof could have chosen a variety of books from different time periods and/or areas to teach the course, yet chose Harry Potter to attract students... I'm glad I didn't go there.

 

I must admit that I feel somewhat ashamed that my university is one of the schools on that list...

 

I agree that these courses have very little real academic application, but I'm betting that they're some of the easiest A's ever conceived.

 

Why is everything about academics with you people? Sheesh, sometimes people just want to talk about the proper technique of spurting things out of wands.