Too-Free Education

It’s another one of those eye-rolling, only-in-Berkeley things.

Students teach university classes in “Deconstructing Professional Wrestling.” Or, you could opt to take a closer look at the original “Star Wars” trilogy through the eyes of fans or a course that promises to “help you to love your body.” All for college credit.

But sex is always the downfall. In this case, it was allegations of a sexual orgy and other improprieties that caused officials to suspend a course on male sexuality in February and launch an investigation. They determined that the sex activities were not part of the course, but the whole roiling debate cast a shadow on UC Berkeley’s “democratic education at Cal,” or “de-cal,” program. Students, supposedly overseen by faculty, teach classes that can’t be found elsewhere at the university--or most other places in the universe.

The debate will rise again starting Monday when the fall season’s crop of classes begins to be posted online at de-cal’s Web site, www.ocf.berkeley.edu/~decal. The list is awaited equally by critics and fans.

Of the 100 or so classes in its online schedule last semester, many were engaging. Some were downright rigorous. The course on the history of Afghanistan was full. Other courses examined prison issues or psychology in modern American film. It’s a world of the tempting and the original, made all the more so by the realization that the instructors are students themselves who go unpaid for their efforts, teaching for the love of it.

But what about that interdisciplinary look at the Grateful Dead? A beginning Greek folk-dancing class that counts as comparative literature rather than physical education? Clearly, something was awry when students got credit toward graduation for learning how to gamble better in a casino. A college cannot just set up a student-led academic program, ask faculty to keep an eye on it and let the thing run every which way.

With closer monitoring and uniform standards, de-cal could be a model addition to higher education, not to mention to the study of Darth Vader. Berkeley could learn plenty from another de-cal class taught last spring: “American Public Universities--Is the Goal of Learning Being Met?”

UC Berkeley plans to keep de-cal but have a working group oversee the courses and train the student instructors. Too bad it won’t have that together in time for the fall class schedule, but the online kibitzers will no doubt have plenty to say.