Honestly, I think both classes have a fair amount of real learning potential, depending always on what your degree is.
Beyonce started out as the non-vocally strong background component of a female pop group. Despite not being the most beautiful or the most talented in the group, and despite the fact that her group was one of a million at the time, she distinguished herself, had a successful solo career, and now is a one-woman empire while most others of her genre (and even her own former group) are enjoying prolonged bouts of obscurity. She's her own brand, her own entity, and one of the most powerful women in music... And not just because of who her husband is.
For somebody who's a liberal arts major and hoping to go into the entertainment industry, or even people who're in the media/marketing/PR degree track, I'm sure the investigation of her brand would be very, very valuable and highly relevant.
As far as the Occupy Wall Street movement, that's actually a fabulous idea, especially for business degrees. Grass roots campaign, word-of-mouth, and it managed to become a movement that spread across the country and, agree with it or not, had direct impacts on businesses around the world. Advertising campaigns were dumped, goodwill programs ramped up, and entire public images were changed as a direct response to a movement that attacked an ideal and not a specific company. If it wasn't for the movement of local governments, some of them would still be "occupying." What was a little nothing sit-in turned into a PR nightmare for companies, corporations, cities, and local and national governments. I bet a study on that whole phenomenon would be awesome for business degrees, PR/marketing, government/citizenship degrees, even a humanities degree.
The Twilight-esque classes, those come and go. I can't remember a time that a popular piece of literature didn't have it's own, usually short lived, class. It makes sense again for the liberal arts degrees to take apart how a book manages to be a pop phenom despite having no real redeeming qualities in terms of writing styles, content, storyline idea/progression, or originality. It has value, just not to all people or all degrees.
That said, when I was in college getting my ECE and business degree, I had to take a class... What was it called... I think it was "Myth and Modern US Culture" and it sounded like it was stupid, unrelated to anything... We watched movies like "Chinatown" and "Stagecoach" and "Baraka" and read a bunch of modern stories/authors, everything from Stephen King to Candice Bushnell (or whatever her name is) and JK Rowling. It ended up being one of the best classes I had in college and a fabulous, fabulous resource for both business and ECE degrees, though heaven help me, you'd never think it would be.
Remembering always that Shakespeare wasn't always Shakespeare and he wasn't always regarded as a literary genius, I think that a lot of those classes certainly have the potential to be more meaningful and relevant then the class that my husband took when he was in college, "Pre-Rennesance European Art Appreciation and Interpretation," or even the one my brother took for a biology and wildlife sciences degree related to LINC computer programming... A computer that was outdated by 1980 and hasn't been in a lab since around the same time. I'd think the practical applications of the entity that is Beyonce is no more or less ridiculous then that. Though, as always, it all depends on the teacher. A teacher can make a bad class worthwhile and a worthwhile class an utter waste of time.
