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

The University of Northern Michigan is offering a new degree this year: 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 have to actually graduate. According to one of the programs 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 said, the Detroit Free Press reported. "It's not an easy degree at all."