16-year-old Katya Kondragunta has already experienced two disasters due to the impact of climate change. First came the wildfires in California in 2020. Ash and smoke forced his family to stay in their home in the Bay Area city of Fremont for weeks.
They later moved to Prosper, Texas; last summer here dealt with record-breaking heat.
“We had terrible heat waves and they affected my daily life,” the high school student said. “I’m in cross country… I have to go out and run every day to get my mileage in.”
Kondragunta says she didn’t learn at school how climate change was intensifying these events, and she hopes that will change when she goes to college.
U.S. colleges are increasingly creating climate change programs to help find solutions and meet demand from students who want to apply their first-hand experiences to their work after high school.
“Many centers and departments have renamed themselves or formed around these climate issues, in part because they think it will attract students and faculty,” said Kathy Jacobs, director of the Center for Climate Adaptation Science and Solutions at the University of Arizona. The project, launched a decade ago, connects various climate programs at the school in Tucson.
Other first movers creating programs, majors, minors, and certificates dedicated to climate change include the University of Washington, Yale University, Utah State University, University of Montana, Northern Vermont University, and the University of California, Los Angeles. Columbia, a private university in New York City, opened its Climate School with a master’s degree in climate and society in 2020, and related undergraduate programs are in the works.
In the last 4 years alone, public Plymouth State University in New Hampshire, Iowa State, Ivy League Vanderbilt in Nashville, Stanford University, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and others have begun climate-related studies. Hampton University, a private, historically black university in Virginia, is currently building one, and the University of Texas at Austin will offer its own this fall.
The fact that climate change affects more people is also one of the factors. Experts say the Biden administration’s Inflation Reduction Act, the largest climate investment in U.S. history, as well as growth in climate-focused jobs, are driving interest.
In these programs, students learn how the atmosphere is changing as a result of burning coal, oil and gas, how crops will change as the planet warms, and the role of renewable energy in reducing the use of fossil fuels.
They dive into how to communicate with the public about climate, the ethical and environmental justice aspects of climate solutions, and the roles lawmakers and businesses play in reducing greenhouse gases.
Students also cover disaster response and ways communities can prepare and adapt before climate change worsens. Offers require faculty in biology, chemistry, physics and social sciences, among others.
“It’s not just ‘oh, yeah, climate, global warming, environmental issues,'” said Lydia Conger, a senior enrolled at Utah State specifically for climate science studies.
“There are interesting technical parts like math and physics, but there are also elements of geology and oceanography and ecology.”
Higher education institutions often draw from existing meteorology and atmospheric science studies when putting together their programs. Some include climate under sustainability or environmental science sections. But climate tracks need to go beyond these to please some incoming students.
In Kennebunk, Maine, high school student Will Eagleson experienced coastal devastation storms. Sea levels are rising in his hometown. To capture his attention when considering college, the 17-year-old said schools should “narrow subjects from the environment and Earth science as a whole to programs more focused on climate change.”
Lucia Everist, a senior at Edina High School in Minnesota who is disappointed by the lack of climate education so far, says schools need to dig deeper into the human impact of climate change. She noted the disproportionate impact on black, Latino, Indigenous and low-income neighborhoods.
“I looked at the curriculum itself a lot,” the 18-year-old said of his college search. Wherever he applied, “I made sure that it had a social aspect as well as a scientific aspect.”
Megan Latshaw, who directs master’s programs in Johns Hopkins University’s Department of Environmental Health and Engineering, said climate students should learn everything from health care to how to store clean solar and wind energy. The school offers a master’s degree in energy policy and climate and also offers two certificates incorporating the term climate change.
“Flooding. Heat waves. Forest fires. It is the air pollution that occurs when we burn fossil fuels. Allergy. This means water scarcity and people having to flee the place they have lived their whole lives,” Latshaw said, noting that the university is trying to incorporate climate change into faculties such as public health, engineering, education, medicine, nursing and more.
Another factor may be that many colleges across the country are facing declining enrollment and less public funding, pushing them to market new degrees to stay relevant.
Many small private colleges have been forced to close over the past decade as fewer students graduate from high school and more people opt for career-oriented education. The same pressures are affecting large public university systems, which are cutting academic programs and faculty to cover budget shortfalls.
John Knox, undergraduate coordinator of the University of Georgia’s Atmospheric Sciences program, considers whether the school should offer a climate certification: “There’s definitely a part of academia that is responding to consumer demand,” he said. “Ultimately, I’m more concerned about our students being successful than I am about marketing something to someone.”
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Associated Press news editor Michael Melia in Connecticut contributed to this story.
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Alexa St. John is a climate solutions reporter for the Associated Press. Follow him on X, formerly Twitter. @alexa_stjohn. Reach him at ast.john@ap.org.
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The Associated Press’s climate and environment coverage receives funding from many private organizations. AP is solely responsible for all content. Find AP’s standards for working with philanthropies, a list of supporters and funded coverage at AP.org.