Underwater Basket Weaving

If you haven't heard of the term, it's used to describe any useless university course or major. Apparently its usage dates back to the 1950s.


In 1968, presumably referring to college students coming up with ways to escape the draft, a senator said: "I am just as interested as you and the chairman or anyone else in seeing that we don't get into the situation that we were in after World War II where we had universities setting up courses in underwater basket-weaving."


Reed College, in Oregon, which is awesome because of the prevalence of dogs on its campus, offers a course on underwater basket weaving, every year since 1980. The University of Arizona offered a snorkelling basket weaving class in 1998, too.


However, willow basket weaving does involve putting reeds underwater to soak for ten hours.