Alternate title: Skidmore College takes a wrecking ball to higher education.

Have we really come to this?

Jennie Grey of The Saratogian reports.

Skidmore to offer course on Miley Cyrus

Skidmore College, whose slogan is “Creative thought matters,” will offer an innovative course this summer starring Miley Cyrus and all her incarnations as a way to study sociology.

The course, called The Sociology of Miley Cyrus: Race, Class, Gender and Media, is a 251-level special topics course taught by Visiting Assistant Professor of Sociology Carolyn Chernoff. The professor encourages students to look past the colon in her course title and see what the class is really about.

“I was teaching a course called Youth Culture in and out of School, and the 2013 MTV Video Music Awards (VMA) became the twerk heard ’round the world,” Chernoff said. “I showed that video to my class, and the students had so much to say.”

Cyrus became the opening personality in sociological discussion on gender, race, class, economic status, identity, fame, sexualization, oppression and power. And the singer kept on doing newsworthy things worth fitting into the larger analysis.

In January, Chernoff delivered a lecture and mediated a group discussion on Cyrus and the cultural issues at the Skidmore Women’s Center. The lecture was called “The Rise and Fall of Miley Cyrus: Race, Class, Gender and Media,” and students’ reaction was positive.

Skidmore junior Layla Lakos, a sociology/philosophy major, first heard about the new Miley course on Facebook. Lakos laughed, but was intrigued all the same.

“You can study a lot of things based on Miley,” she said. “She represents how transient wealth and fame can be, and shows how possible it is to change your image.”