http://www.knbc.com/news/15406258/detail.html?rss=la&psp=news

You know you're in a different kind of college when a teaching assistant
sets five marijuana plants down in the middle of a lab and no one blinks a
bloodshot eye.

Welcome to Oaksterdam University, a new trade school where "higher
education" takes on a whole new meaning.

The school prepares people for jobs in California's thriving medical
marijuana industry.

For $200 and the cost of two required textbooks, students learn how to
cultivate and cook with cannabis, study which strains of pot are best for
certain ailments, and are instructed in the legalities of a business that is
against the law in the eyes of the federal government.

The only prerequisite for the course is a Politics/Legal Issues 101 class.

"My basic idea is to try to professionalize the industry and have it taken
seriously as a real industry, just like beer and distilling hard alcohol,"
said Richard Lee, 45, an activist and pot-dispensary owner who founded the
school in a downtown storefront last fall.