They teach human sexuality in colleges by asking students to masturbate?

"Well, at least not in the classroom" is how I consoled myself after reading this news item about a student in Nevada who alleges that "a professor there required students to divulge personal details of their sex lives and assigned them to masturbate"

Royce, 60, is a medical technician who's working toward a degree in social work. She said she enrolled in the freshman-level Human Sexuality class, which fulfills a social science requirement, based on the description of the class in the course catalog. It says the class covers topics such as gender, sexual anatomy, sexually transmitted diseases and commercial sex, among others.
Royce said the course began with a discussion of different sexual positions, and she said the instructor went on to assign students to double their normal masturbation routine over the course of two weeks and write journals about their experiences.
"I joked, but was serious and said, 'I don't masturbate, so zero times zero is zero!'" Royce wrote in her complaint, which she filed with the U.S. Education Department's Office of Civil Rights. "He became angry and ordered the class to masturbate if they intended to pass the class."

In case you are freaking out already, wait, there is more!

Other journal assignments in Kubistant's class included requiring female students to write "your views of your breasts and vulva," and the instruction: "Your orgasms. Draw them!"
The term paper for the course requires students to write a 12- to 14-page sexual case study on themselves.
The project begins with a sex history -- including a directive to reveal any instances of abuse -- and continues through sexual values, arousal patterns and atypical issues such as fetishes.
When Royce asked Kubistant for an alternative assignment, she said, he again refused.
"He said I absolutely had to complete it as assigned or I would not pass the class," she said in the complaint. "Then he inferred to the class that I had issues that (I) need to work out and this might be sexual freedom."

I am glad I was not a student in that class!

The news item does state that no other student has complained about the course.  So, I am not sure what to make of it.

But, it is not difficult to believe that such assignments might have been required.  A few months ago, a psychology class at Northwestern hit the national news because ...

Led by a man whose website describes him as a “psychic detective and ghost hunter,” it was called “Networking for Kinky People,” and began with a towel placed neatly on the auditorium stage. Next, a woman took her clothes off, and—with an audience of around 100—lay down on her back, legs spread. As students moved forward from the theater’s back seats, for a closer view, “The girl grabbed the mic,” says Sean Lavery, a Northwestern freshman. “She explained that she had a fetish for being watched by large crowds while having an orgasm.”No, the girl involved was not a student. Yes, she was over 21, we’re told—and the guy stimulating her was introduced as her boyfriend. “It was a committed couple who did the demonstration, and it happened at the end of the class,” says Ken Melvoin-Berg, the guest speaker, who helps operate a tour company called Weird Chicago that offers sex tours.
We'll spare you the gory details—but let's just say they involved the woman's boyfriend bringing her to climax on stage, using a contraption called a "fucksaw," and plenty of gasps, not just from flabbergasted students. “I was gauging everyone’s reaction,” says Lavery, who’s been in Bailey’s class since January. “I think everyone was just like, ‘Is she really doing this right now?’”

I noted Joseph Epstein's comment in that context:

One of the most important things that departed from higher education with the old ideal of the university was intellectual authority. One of the first changes I noticed from my own undergraduate education when I began teaching at Northwestern—and this is certainly not true of Northwestern alone—was all the junky subject matter being taught. Courses in science fiction, in the movies, in contemporary or near contemporary writers already consigned to the third class ... 

As I noted then:

Oh well, whatever happened to the university as the intellectual authority?  When did they begin to allow fakes like me into their campuses?

I suppose sex does sell.

Perhaps I should start thinking about renaming courses that way.  "The Indian Subcontinent" ought to be retitled "Sex in Bollywood" and "Introductory Economic Geography" can become "Why is Pornography in the Silicone Valley?"

Nah; will never happen. I am way too square for that :(