America's 10 Hottest Classes

From an English class devoted to Harry Potter to an econ course taught by a blackjack dealer, The Daily Beast's Kathleen Kingsbury picks out the most in-demand college classes in the country. Plus, view our gallery of celebrity professors—including Spike Lee, Bobby Flay, and Eliot Spitzer.

You can tell a lot about a generation by which of their college classes are hardest to get into. The 1960s saw Kennedy inspired legions of poli-sci majors, the Cold War spurred a rise in Soviet studies and more recently, the Internet boom led to a wealth of new html courses.

By this yardstick, here's what one could say about the youth of today: they're hyper-curious, geeky, adventurous foodies who love TV and want to visit countries they're not supposed to go to.

Click Below to View Our Gallery of Celebrity Professors

As the new school year kicks off, The Daily Beast asked ivory towers across the country what their "best classes" are this year—the ones everyone wants to get into but only the lucky few can. It was, by no means, an exhaustive sample: 54 schools, both public and private, were asked to participate; we culled the most interesting of the bunch. Still, the survey yields some surprising conclusions about what's on the minds of today’s college students. First of all, forget what you've heard about American kids' alleged disinterest in science and math. Even at liberal arts colleges, the most oversubscribed courses this year fall almost invariably under biology, chemistry or physics. “This generation has been born into a worldview used to questioning one’s assumptions,” says Tammy Nyden, a philosophy professor at Grinnell College. “Analysis and experimentation are built into our culture now and very appealing to young people.”

It is, indeed, the era of the cool nerd, and the wonky sense of curiosity embodied by pop-science stars like Malcolm Gladwell and Michael Pollan is playing out in the clamor for geek-chic classes.

Yale
Amazon Rain Forest Expedition and Laboratory
Scott Strobel

During Spring Break, Strobel takes his 18 upperclassmen for a hands-on tour of Ecuador’s rain forests. This trip, no doubt, is a huge selling point. But so is the fact that Strobel’s father, also a world-class microbiologist, discovered the organism that produces taxol, the base component of a major breast-cancer drug, on a similar trip. “The sense of going from the jungle trail to a potential pharmaceutical is definitely a draw,” Strobel says.

But Strobel also warns that some of the scientific turnout by students must be attributed to great professors. Captivating science faculty can be so hard to find that if word gets out that one is excellent, students will stampede to enroll. “Science professors can be incredibly good because they are so passionate and knowledgeable about what they teach,” he says. “But they are the exception, not the rule.”

Wellesley
Personal Finance
Ann Witte

The financial meltdown has blown the economics major wide open; such courses are oversubscribed at nearly all campuses this fall. Witte’s personal-finance course was always fashionable among Wellesley students who thought they would be soon heading off to Wall Street. But now demand is just as likely to come from coeds looking for skills that will keep them out of the red once they graduate. “Students take out loans and credit cards all the time without even thinking about it,” says former Witte student Noelle Fogg, adding that she thinks the class "should be renamed ‘life skills’ and be mandatory.”

Kansas State
Harry Potter’s Library
Phil Nel

Not everyone's paying forty grand a year for something as frivolous as economics, though. Take, for instance, Nel’s “Harry Potter’s Library” literature course at Kansas State. The 30-person course always fills and typically has a waiting list at least twice the size of the class.

Nel believes that the course should not be seen as competing with the more traditional English canon. “There's a prejudice against both popular fiction and children's literature,” he says. “The Harry Potter class encourages students to shrug off that prejudice, and treat these books with the same degree of thoughtfulness usually reserved for Woolf, Shakespeare, or Austen.”

Students agree. “I think the fact that the university allows [Nel] to teach a class about Harry Potter says more about my generation than anything else,” says fifth-year KSU student Ryan Felber. “Administrators finally understand that students do better in school when the classes are about topics that interest them.” Plus, Felber adds, “We have seen Harry Potter go from a great kids’ novel to an international sensation—it’s part of our heritage and our background.”