U.S. college students are, like, totally into clean energy
In answer to the loathed question “What are you going to do after you graduate?” gaggles of U.S. college students are looking into careers in alternative energy. (A group of college students is called a gaggle, right?) Green technology is having a heyday in schools from Illinois State to Harvard to Dartmouth; energy professor Dan Kammen says enrollment in energy classes at UC-Berkeley “is off the charts.” At Stanford, which recently renamed its Petroleum Engineering Department the Energy Resources Engineering Department, attendance at a recent student-organized renewable-energy symposium was nearly triple the 500 expected. “There is a fad dynamic to this, but I think that this is going to be a long-term thing,” says Christine Rosen of UC’s Haas School of Business. “Technological innovation, the rising cost of oil, conflict in the Middle East, and the public’s growing awareness of global climate change are having an impact.” You might even say we’re finally learning our lesson.
