San Francisco City College Offering Cannabis Studies Degree

City College of San Francisco is rolling out a two-year cannabis studies degree program for the fall semester – an expansion to the cannabis industry courses it already offers, San Francisco News reports. The college first announced it would offer industry-related courses in 2017.

The associate degree program requires three courses: Introduction to Cannabis – which the college has offered previously – Anthropology of Cannabis, and Psychology of Psychoactive Drugs. Students must also take four electives.

Jennifer Dawgert Carlin, Chair of the Behavioral Sciences Department and head of the program, told the News that students could use the degree as a “specialized area” to transfer to a four-year program and study public policy, anthropology, or public health.

“We’re not here to teach people what to think about cannabis and the subjects. Our job is to teach people how to think about it. Our hope is that students will come and not only learn about cannabis if they want to be working in the industry, but also to understand how powerfully important cannabis as a concept and as a phenomenon is.” – Carlin to the San Francisco Examiner

CCSF Chancellor Rajen Vurdien told the Examiner that the program “shows how fast the college moves to address societal problems and issues and at the same time to address the needs of the job market as they emerge.”

When the college first announced it would offer a cannabis industry-related course, it was a partnership with the United Food and Commercial Workers union and Oakland-based Oaksterdam University and program enrollees had to be sponsored by the UFCW or another union with apprenticeship programs in the cannabis space.