With student loan debt soaring at historic highs, you'd think college students would invest their precious dollars in courses which could effectively prepare them for a future career -- from doctors and lawyers to engineers and chemists.

But as this list demonstrates, some college "education" prepares students to be Starbucks baristas for the rest of their lives:

1. Sociology of Fame and Lady Gaga -- University of South Carolina

2. Wordplay: A Wry Plod from Babel to Scrabble -- Princeton

3. “Oh, Look, a Chicken!” Embracing Distraction as a Way of Knowing -- Belmont University

4. Things That Go Bump in the Night -- Hampshire College

5. Theory and History of Video Games -- Swarthmore

6. Fly Fishing -- Montana State

7. Physics for Future Presidents -- UC Berkeley

8. Zombies in Popular Media -- Columbia College Chicago

9. Cyborg Anthropology -- Lewis & Clark College

10. Popular Flops: Bad Movies -- Tufts University

11. Philosophy and The Wire -- Georgetown University

12. Tightwaddery: The Good Life on a Dollar a Day -- Alfred University

13. Biology of Jurassic Park -- Hood College

14. Joy of Garbage -- Santa Clara University

15. Disney Features: Then and Now -- UCLA

16. How to Watch Television -- Montclair State

17. Invented Languages: Klingon and Beyond -- University of Texas at Austin

18. The Phallus -- Occidental College

19. The Textual Appeal of Tupac Shakur -- University of Washington

20. The American Vacation -- University of Iowa

21. California Culture -- San Francisco State

22. Goldberg's Cannon: Makin' Whoopi -- Bates College

Mental Floss has more info on each of these unique courses

Do you have a course to add to the list?  Let us know in the comments!