"I would found an institution where any person can find instruction in any study." -Ezra Cornell.

I'm not sure if they're offered anymore, but they used to have Basic Rifle Marksmanship and Epee de Guerre. My friend once told me he thought my major was "weapons".

I clearly wasted my time with English Lit, Modern European History, Linguistics and German in my first year at University!

Don't feel bad. I wasted my time with Soviet Studies. Oops.

Something tells me that that is still pretty relevant...

I thought you were joking, but handgun safety really is a college class... Just wow.

It makes sense, given there are academic fields where a gun might be needed. E.g. if your research involves inventorying songbirds in the jungles of Colombia or whatever. Even in the U.S. a lot of mycologists carry weapons, so if they get shot at while accidentally stumbling on an illegal weed grow or whatever they can shoot back.

The description looks like it's about competition, not just safety, akin to a class on poker. Perhaps the title is a bit of spin for defensive reasons.

Thats what I was thinking, safety is critical, but an easy 2 day class. There are so many more interesting angles for engineering students to approach handguns whether self defense (more Bondish) or marksmanship, engineering principles etc.

Svalbad University has an, AFAIK mandatory, course that includes learning hot to shoot a rifle: https://www.unis.no/course/as-101-arctic-survival-and-safety...

In most of Svalbad you need to carry a rifle to defend yourself against polar bears.

> The course is intended for students with little or no prior experience of life in the high Arctic.

I’d say that there’s not many of them if they go to school there.

A decent chunk of the svalbard population is researchers who moved there for the sake of their research.

I thought it was mandatory for anybody leaving town to either carry rifle, a sacrificial husky (!), or a guide who had both?

I mean, Cornell is an Ivy, not a regional school.