Why don't colleges have required courses?

Remember that colleges used to have required courses. It was considered essential for anyone who wanted to call himself "educated" to know certain things.

Here is a little list that mere women (not even well-educated men!) were obliged to go through in 1810:

[Miss Bingley:] "...no one can be really esteemed accomplished, who does not greatly surpass what is usually met with. A woman must have a thorough knowledge of music, singing, drawing, dancing, and the modern languages, to deserve the word; and besides all this, she must possess a certain something in her air and manner of walking, the tone of her voice, her address and expressions, or the word will be but half deserved.''

``All this she must possess,'' added Darcy, ``and to all this she must yet add something more substantial, in the improvement of her mind by extensive reading.''

As for what gentlemen must possess, it was a college education, which comprehended a LOT more than you'll find in even good colleges today. A classical education, including history, Latin, Greek, a couple of modern languages, English grammar and again, "something more substantial, in the improvement of [his] mind by extensive reading." Every mind was expected to be improved else the bearer of the mind would be looked down upon with contempt (because its owner would be considered roughly equivalent to an Irish bricklayer).

In the Twenties and Thirties our Progressives decided to drop standards. "Who is to say that one thing is better than another?" And an old philosophy based in the nonsensical sayings of Rousseau, was dredged up, that education must be determined by the student and whatever the student was interested in learning, and not what some stuffy committee of old grizzled men had decided.

When WW2 was over and our GIs flooded the colleges, their way paid by the GI Bill, and under the assumption that getting a college diploma would bring you a bigger paycheck, colleges took in a huge number of less-educated, less-capable (read "less brilliant") students, and with colleges expanding as fast as they could, the standards had to come down. No longer were Greek and Latin required, nor even were they seen as relevant. Engineering and Business seemed to be the order of the day, not Philosophy or Literature.

But it was in the Sixties that you saw the heyday of the hedonistic curriculum. I have been long used to thinking my peers, the hippies, had inaugurated this anarchy with their mantra of "who's to say what's better than something else?" and all the attendant "ethnic studies" malarkey. But this stuff followed on the heels of even worse courses which were variously described contemptuously as "Underwater Basketweaving 101". So we had hippies under the tutelage of beatniks who had learned from GI Bill benefactors who had never met Mr Chips and probably would have hated him had they ever studied under him.

Now these hippies have taught two generations that there is no such thing as standards, and these generations are in charge of the schools. "It is bad to teach grammar," said the NEA in 1927 at their annual convention; and this axiom was seconded in 1947 and again in 1972. What in the world is wrong with teaching grammar? Well, it confuses and bores the student and it keeps the incompetent teacher (who does not understand grammar anyway) from teaching something that is actually important, such as conflict resolution, self-esteem, or sex ed.

How in the world is could there be required courses in this system?