Harvey Mudd Has Too Many Climate Majors – And Not Enough Environmentalism

Harvey Mudd's Hixon Climate Center. (Photo Credit: Harvey Mudd College)

Since 2024, Harvey Mudd College has created four joint majors, all related to climate: Chemistry and Climate, Computer Science and Climate, Biology and Climate, and most recently, Mathematics and Climate. Despite making up four of only 15 majors at the college, only eight of Mudd’s 649 declared students are in one of the joint climate majors. If Harvey Mudd wants to be at the forefront of environmental issues, it needs more students majoring in climate, not more climate joint-major options.

Mudd is betting on future demand for climate research as the effects of climate change become more apparent. It will take two years to adjust for the lagging effect of adding a major to the College, but among my peers in the class of 2030, those looking to pursue climate research are few and far between. So why do so few students see it as worthwhile to pursue the major?

For one, public engagement with climate change has been steadily diminishing. Views of Wikipedia’s “Climate change” article have fallen by more than half since 2022, from about 4,700 a day to under 1,800. Climate change is being overshadowed by more pressing issues. Many of my peers look to the future and feel hopeless about climate change, rather than seeing it as an issue that is worth addressing. 

Second, and more importantly, many at Harvey Mudd—a college that sets most graduates up for lucrative careers—see a climate major as a vow of poverty: a noble choice that can’t support a comfortable living. “All of the kids that want to become rich aren’t looking at climate majors,” a Mudd first-year told the Claremont Independent. This seems to be in line with the data. The clean energy sector lost nearly 37,000 jobs in 2025 after federal tax credits were rolled back. With an increasingly competitive job market, it feels like working in climate science simply isn't tenable for most students.

Ultimately, such a focus on income reflects a failure of Harvey Mudd’s mission to “educate engineers, scientists and mathematicians... with a clear understanding of the impact of their work on society.” Everyone here jokes about working a morally dubious job at Lockheed Martin, but I gather many of us, subconsciously, see getting a high-paying job, not a moral one, as the goal.

Climate-related jobs aren’t necessarily worse in terms of pay than non-climate related jobs, they’re only perceived that way. According to LinkedIn job data, global demand for workers with green skills grew twice as fast as supply in each of the last two years. Compensation tells a similar story: The average wage for green jobs pays a premium of roughly 5 to 7 percent in Europe and Japan. Although investment in climate-related projects has fallen since the beginning of the Trump administration, funding for such projects will likely return in the next few years, furthering growth.

This being said, one can hardly blame students for believing that opportunities for climate-related jobs are few and far between: Mudd seems to tailor career support around computer scientists and engineers, with very few opportunities to learn about paths into climate-related fields. The Office of Career Services attempts this through a “Green Careers” cluster on its internship list, but for a college where more than a quarter of its major options are in climate-related science, there should be vastly more opportunities to learn about these careers than exist currently. This requires an expansion of climate career path panels with alumni and increased exposure to climate-related fields for Mudd students.

Mudd’s proliferation of climate joint majors reads as virtue signaling given their lack of student enrollment. Instead of guiding students toward a real demand, they exist to make the college look good. Harvey Mudd has enough climate programs. What it really needs is support for students pursuing careers in environmental science. Until Mudd makes its support for climate-related careers genuine rather than performative, these majors will continue to be underenrolled.