As cannabusiness grows, the nation’s colleges and universities are staying relevant by training the next generation. Well, they’re trying, anyway. Academic institutions have designed courses, certificate programs, and degrees to equip students with cannabis industry knowledge, but many live in fear of a shutdown.
Not that you can tell by the offerings. Colleges offer courses in cannabis genetics, marketing, regulations, and more, spanning every aspect of the industry. The University of Maryland’s School of Pharmacy offers a graduate certificate in medical cannabis for those who want to become more informed practitioners. At Harvard, future attorneys can take three hours on cannabis law. Want to become a certified Cannabis Cultivation Specialist? The City University of New York lets you take classes online.
Even technical colleges are “going green.” At Hocking College in Nelsonville, Ohio, students prepare for jobs in testing labs through the school’s cannabis major in laboratory science. The two-year program’s curriculum mixes applicable standard classes, such as microbiology, with cannabis-specific courses that span both the arts (Humans, Cannabis, and the Forgotten History) with the sciences (Indoor Crop Production, Industry Regulations & Compliance).
The benefits of such programs often go beyond the ivory tower. Like many other schools, Hocking makes double use of their equipment by also running one of the state’s official testing labs. In the same way that college extension programs pass on the latest in agriculture breakthroughs to farmers, cannabis research centers can act as conduits to move the latest research and discoveries from academia to growers, sellers, and medical professionals.
Cannabis programs aim to boost local economies and prepare students to land jobs in a rapidly growing, well-paying industry. It should be a win-win scenario, but nothing about cannabis can ever be that simple.
Keep it in the Lab
Campuses are some of the most jarring juxtapositions of state and national laws. A syllabus may require a student to study weed in the lab, but their dorms prohibit it from crossing the threshold—sometimes under penalty of expulsion.
Even in places where medical and recreational uses are legal, the federal government can withhold funding from institutions that play too loose with the rules. Losing federal dollars does more than harm a school’s bottom line; it threatens long-term research projects and would likely cause a public relations nightmare.
Thus, meeting—and often exceeding—legal requirements is a must, and universities have come up with several creative ways to make things work. For example, many resort to stocking labs and growing gardens with low-THC hemp instead of allowing students to use the real stuff.
Outside of the classroom, the rules are even murkier. To keep the feds away, colleges severely limit the kind of industry partnerships that define the modern college experience. Many schools ban cannabis companies from bringing branded merchandise to job fairs and prohibit them from advertising job openings on official university channels. The number of cannabis major scholarships, sponsorships, and partnerships are far lower than they would likely be if the industry were federally legal. The lack of connections deprives colleges of the kind of investments that fund state-of-the-art facilities, which in turn attract the best students and faculty and often lead to research breakthroughs.
For a college administrator, walking these fine lines can feel agonizing. The legal gray areas ensure that even the most meticulous policies can sag under the strain of strict scrutiny. At any point, grandstanding pundits might drum up a new college scandal that foments public pressure from lawmakers and concerned parents.
For college students, the rules can seem absurd. Imagine going through the kangaroo court of a disciplinary hearing for possessing a small amount of legal substance that you’ve taken on $30,000 in student loans to study. It’s enough to make anyone want to study Kafka.
While expulsion is rare, students caught holding, using, selling, or being under the influence of cannabis on campus can face punishments as severe as the loss of financial aid to criminal charges.
The Athletic Angle
As colleges work to rebrand themselves as both cannabusiness-friendly and anti-marijuana, their athletics consortium has also changed with the times. In June, the NCAA Division I council voted to take cannabis off its list of banned drugs for athletes participating in the football postseason.
Officially, members of the body claimed they were more interested in student health than in banning legal substances that do not confer a competitive advantage. In the minds of many in the public, however, the move was simply a nod toward reality.
Top-tier student-athletes, the kind who regularly make college football’s postseason, can make millions through Name, Image, and Likeness (NIL) deals. And many are legally allowed to buy and use cannabis in their states. Disqualifying these athletes for weed not only damages the (very lucrative) product on the field but also hurts the feelings of the businesses and boosters who pay those student-athletes so handsomely. If a company pays a 20-year-old $5 million, they want to see him in the championship game, even if there’s a bit of weed in his system.
At the same time, most states have laws that prohibit cannabis companies (and others) from sponsoring NIL deals. In other cases, colleges themselves impose similar morality restrictions on sponsorships from companies in the business of alcohol, tobacco, pornography, and gambling.
That states, even those who have legalized all those things, try to keep them away from college students makes an odd kind of sense. Our society likes to pit its cultural battles on college campuses. They represent the country’s future, and their strange mix of tradition and progress speaks to both sides of the political spectrum.
But outside of the academic arguments, it’s clear that cannabis has been a part of college culture for generations. That it’s now become legitimate can feel like an inversion of the natural order; professors know more about weed than students. If legislators dislike that idea, it’s their own fault. As lawmakers continue to reduce college funding, academic institutions will act more like private businesses to recoup those losses. Responding to market pressures by offering cannabis education doesn’t just make for smart studies; it’s good business.
