How About a Degree in the Beatles?

Liverpool Hope University now offers a degree in Beatleology. Allan Kozinn wrote about it for the New York Times last week. He has taught individual courses on the Beatles himself at New York University and has been astonished at the vast knowledge 20-year-olds have about this iconic band from the 60's. He says it's about time Liverpool figured out that there is still a tremendous amount of interest in their hometown boys.

Kozinn's article is of interest to the Continuing Education gang for at least three reasons. The first is obvious. Many of the "older" lifelong learners out there grew up with the Beatles. I'm guessing a whole lot of them would really enjoy reliving those years by taking a Beatles course. If you're a grown-up hippie, ask about one at your local university or community ed. center.

The second group is for the non-traditional student who hasn't finished a degree, maybe even in music, and might be able to find a distance learning course that would rejuvenate all those wonderful reasons you started down the music path in the first place. Stir things up.

And the third? This is the kind of course continuing education administrators should have their eye on if they're trying to keep enrollments up. Kozinn wrote "that nearly twice as many students as [he] could accommodate showed up." That's a course with draw.

I can tell you the idea gets my wheels turning as an adjunct. What a fun course to teach. Let's add a fourth interest group: teachers. I don't have the depth of knowledge I would need to teach this course, but I'm betting some of you do.

Join us in the forum and we'll come up with some other interesting course ideas.