Marijuana Industry Leans on Universities to Bolster Workforce

The still developing marijuana industry that’s emerged on the heels of increased legalization is pushing more colleges and universities to offer academic programs to prepare students for various career opportunities in one of the country’s fastest growing job markets.

The Jesuit Catholic St. Joseph’s University in Philadelphia is now offering four certificates in cannabis studies. Students at California State Polytechnic University, Humboldt, will start taking classes this fall in the school’s newly created cannabis studies bachelor’s degree program. New York City-based Medgar Evers College is adding new associate’s and bachelor’s degree programs next spring—and some students can also earn a degree tuition-free.

These schools are joining Colorado State University, University of Michigan, and a growing list of other institutions with cannabis-focused degree or certificate programs covering topics such as management, law, and the science of marijuana.

The programs, some of which have received financial support from industry players, are designed to expose students to different career options in the marijuana business—from plant cultivation to research, marketing, and retail and supply chain management.

They reflect an emerging and highly regulated business sector with a dire need for workers with wide-ranging skills and credentials, even as it lacks industry-accepted guidelines to develop and grow its workforce, academics and industry players told Bloomberg Law.

“We’re really trying to meet the needs of the workforce” because employers “really feel strongly that they want better student preparation,” said Steve Fix, professor and department chair of Oakton Community College’s cannabis studies program, which offers three for-credit certificates.

Illinois-based Oakton launched its program in 2019, making it the first college in the state to offer a cannabis-specific academic course.

Employers’ Challenges

Employment opportunities in the marijuana industry can be lucrative, but employers are grappling with a workforce that has little to no business acumen and baseline knowledge about the science of the plant, academics said. That makes it all the more difficult for employers to respond to the fast-changing, complex legal landscape, they said.

Employers often “have to train their employees on the job for about a year to get them up to where they could really be self-sufficient and effective,” said Michael Zaytsev, academic director of LIM College’s business of cannabis bachelor’s and master’s degree programs in New York. “This is from entry-level positions to executive roles,” he said.

The private fashion school launched both programs almost a year ago in response to increased interest from students.

“It’s kind of a start-up industry still,” Zaytsev said. “A lot of these companies, including the biggest ones, are in start-up mode, and for them to worry about training workers about the basics of cannabis science and understanding what language is appropriate and accurate, that’s an additional cost they really don’t want to bear.”

Liesl Bernard, CEO and founder of CannabizTeam, said there’s limited formal training outside the higher education setting, and that her cannabis executive search and staffing firm has to look for talent from other sectors like the food and wine industry.

But betting on these candidates to transfer their skills and “hoping they can make a positive impact on the cannabis industry and fill the gaps” comes with a risk, Bernard said.

“It’s like fitting a square peg into a round hole,” she said. “There is a risk they might not be able to contribute to the extent the company needed, or they don’t transition well and adapt to the cannabis industry, which is quite chaotic with all the changes happening.”

‘Real’ Growth Coming

The US cannabis industry had more than 428,000 full-time jobs as of January 2022, a 33% increase since the prior year, according to a recent jobs report from industry group Leafly. This marked the fifth consecutive year the marijuana industry showed an annual job growth greater than 27%, despite the economic and employment challenges of the Covid-19 pandemic, it said.

The cannabis market is expected to approach $45 billion annually by 2025, the report said.

Cannabis industry salaries vary by job location, company size, and several other factors. The median salary for a cannabis firm CEO is $402,350, according to CannabizTeam’s 2023 Cannabis Industry Salary Guide.

The median salary for a dispensary manager is $99,450, while a budtender could earn about $42,000.

“While there’s been a lot of growth in the last decade, the real growth is still yet to come,” said Max Simon, CEO of Green Flower, a cannabis career training company. Green Flower partners with dozens of schools to offer non-credit online certificate courses as part of their continuing education programs, which are typically aimed at working professionals seeking to acquire new skills or pivot to new careers, Simon said.

“It’s full of complexities and difficulties,” Simon said. “But there are a lot of opportunities for growth.”

That growth comes amid increased legalization of marijuana and shifting societal attitudes toward its use. Despite the industry’s growth, it’s also struggling with ongoing competition from the illicit market.

School Hesitancy

Twenty-three states plus the District of Columbia so far have legalized marijuana for adult recreational use. Almost all states allow some form of medical marijuana use.

But a lingering stigma attached to marijuana, combined with its continued illegality at the federal level, has kept some colleges and universities from embracing the industry as a career option.

Green Flower’s partnership with “reputable institutions” like Syracuse University and the University of California, Riverside lend credibility to the company’s effort to expand its online cannabis education programs, which ultimately helped compel other institutions to come on board, Simon said.

“In the beginning, it was incredibly taboo to talk about these things,” he said. “In 2023, it’s less about the stigma and more about the quality of the programs and whether schools want to be involved in developing this sector’s workforce.”

There’s also the matter of financial support.

Schools that receive federal funds are prohibited from growing, possessing, or using marijuana. In response, some cultivate hemp—a nonintoxicating form of cannabis that became legal under federal law in 2018—for learning purposes. Others offer courses that merely focus on the business aspect of the marijuana industry.

Social Equity

Industry players also see the marijuana industry as a way to level the playing field.

Supporters of Oakton’s cannabis studies program fund academic scholarships to create a pathway for students of color, minorities who were disproportionately targeted by anti-drug crackdowns, and survivors of domestic violence to enter into and reap the financial benefits from the booming marijuana market, Fix said.

In that vein, he doesn’t see the need for a degree program at Oakton—at least for now.

A certificate program is inexpensive and also provides career-focused and skills-based training for in-demand fields, Fix said.

“Social equity is just so fundamental to cannabis. We want students to have a targeted, rich experience that prepares them as best as possible for what they’re going to encounter in the world of cannabis,” Fix said. “We try to keep things as equitable as possible.”