The phrase was used during the Vietnam War era to describe the sort of major that many young men who would otherwise not have entered college undertook to escape the draft. US Senator Gordon L. Allott referred in 1968 to "the situation that we were in after World War II where we had universities setting up courses in underwater basket weaving, and all this sort of thing". Senator Robert Byrd used the phrase in 1969 when questioning the use of funds to offer professional training to Cuban refugees. The University of Portsmouth, UK, has a joke syllabus for underwater basket weaving on the Technology faculty pages, and another joke syllabus proposal was posted by a University of Central Arkansas student magazine.