College courses in US getting a bit stranger as students treated more like consumers

It used to be that college students all had to take the same core curriculum to fulfill their requirements and move on to their majors. Cram 500 students into a room and make them learn western civilization or English 101 and you’re good to go.
But lately, colleges have been giving students more flexibility, offering open curriculum courses that are more off the beaten path, often with extremely specific subject matters, like “Wordplay: A Wry Plod from Babel to Scrabble” (Princ