An employee with medicinal marijuana plants in the flowering room at Tweed INC. in Smith Falls, Ontario, on December 5, 2016.

Northern Michigan University is offering a degree that may catch the eye of marijuana enthusiasts: medicinal plant chemistry. And apparently it pays. "All of our graduates are going to be qualified to be analysts in a lab setting," Brandon Canfield, the associate professor of analytical chemistry who started the program, tells CNBC Make It. That could lead to a position that pays $70,000 right out of school, he adds. But first students actually have to graduate. According to one of the program's earliest participants, Northern Michigan sophomore Alex Roth, who has 400-level classes like Biostatics and Gas and Liquid Chromatography to get through, that's not as simple as it sounds. "When they hear what my major is, there are a lot of people who say, 'Wow, cool, dude. You're going to get a degree growing marijuana,'" Roth tells the Detroit Free Press. "It's not an easy degree at all."

The program doesn't just focus on horticulture. It combines courses on chemistry, biology, marketing and financial management. In fact, students won't even be growing marijuana, Canfield says, though that is the first question everyone asks him. There are a couple specific tracks offered within the major. One has a bio-analytical focus. Those students could go on to graduate programs, says Canfield, and they will be strong job candidates because they will have completed an independent study. The other track is for aspiring entrepreneurs. For those students, it's not clear what the future might hold. To offer an example of what they could do, Canfield suggests they might open a growing operation with a lab in-house. "We have a small sample set of students right now, so we're not sure where the greater interest is going to be," he says, "but some students are very enthusiastic about the business track."