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Six-Hour Tour. Certain fields seem peculiarly prone to guthood—geography, for example. Yale's easy Geography 65 (Political Geography) consists solely of lectures ("the most boring in Yale College"), with not a line of required reading, and if this is too much to bear, Geography 42B ("Maps") offers neither term paper nor final exam. Even Yale cannot match Wayne State University's Geography 652 ("Travel Field Studies"), which awards six credit hours for touring Europe with the professor.
Astronomy is also in among astute gut-seekers. To pass Princeton's Astrophysics 301 is a marvel of objective-exam simplicity: the student who knows an answer is true puts a 3 in the true box, an 0 in the false box. If he isn't sure, he puts a 2 in each box and is assured two points of credit. At the University of Michigan, astronomy is in the venerable hands of Dr. Hazel Losh, a first-rate scholar with a grandmotherly concern for athletes. In her painless introductory course, says one resentful girl, "A is for athletes, B is for boys and ¶is for coeds."
At Northwestern University, a "McGoo" is any of five political science courses taught by popular Professor William McGovern, who seems to hate the alphabet beyond the letter C. "We have students who major in this man," says one boy. Equally loved are "appreciation" courses taught by professors who simply aim to "expose" students to their subject. In the booming "opera appreciation" course at the University of Washington, the only chore is to sum up one opera plot. "The teacher feels that if you are interested enough to show up, you are passing the course," says one student. At Harvard, Fine Arts 13 is unofficially called "Darkness at Noon" because it meets then, uses slides, and doesn't tax the student's mind. Yale's arcanely titled "Introduction to Iconography" demands no term paper, but just an afternoon tour around Manhattan museums. Equally easy at Wayne State is "Modern Poetry" taught by Pulitzer Prizewinner W. D. Snodgrass (Heart's Needle), who mostly reads poetry aloud. Real appreciation is the result, says one student, "but there's no final exam, no term paper and no strain."
Upward & Outward. Parroting the jargon is the secret in sociology. "You can write any old thing as long as you mention 'upward mobility' and 'outer-directedness,' " says a Yaleman of Sociology 26A, which almost guarantees a grade of more than 80. And of the reading, says another, "just remember that when a father and son have a fight, it stands for the decline of the American family." Equally alluring is Sociology 69B (Criminology), which until recently required the reading of Rocky Graziano's autobiography, Somebody Up There Likes Me.