Academic Degrees

In what could be an encouraging sign of change in the long-standing shortage of Americans preparing for "clean energy" careers, the subject is suddenly hot on college campuses across the nation -- a surge of interest largely stimulated by the specter of global warming.

For years Chase Abrams has lived a double life: By day a popular student at Sierra Canyon School who played football and enjoyed hanging out with friends, by night an intent student of film studies at Cal State Los Angeles who organized college film festivals and held his own intellectually and socially. Today, the energetic 18-year-old can finally take a breath.

Grace Obata Amemiya was a pre-nursing student at UC Berkeley in 1942 when she, her family and 120,000 other Japanese Americans were forced from their schools and homes and sent to federal internment camps. The wartime relocations destroyed her childhood dream of a University of California diploma. Amemiya, now 88, joyfully returned to UC on Thursday and was named a graduate six decades late.

The large wave of refugees from war-ravaged Central America that arrived two decades ago has transformed more than neighborhoods, the workforce and restaurant cuisine of Southern California. Now, as Vanessa Guerrero's new diploma shows, the influence of that migration is being embraced academically by one of the region's largest public universities.

Diana Nguyen has dreamed of teaching high school since she was inspired by her ninth-grade world history instructor, who made the subject jump off the page. But when the UC Irvine student receives her teaching credential this summer, she plans to move to Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam, to teach English. Why the change in plans? Simple, Nguyen, 23, said in her characteristic upbeat way. There are no jobs for a social studies teacher.

Laura Simurda faced a tough decision recently in choosing which of three simultaneous graduation ceremonies to attend at USC. After all, she was a triple major, earning degrees in astronomy, history and print journalism. Simurda finally chose to be among her astronomy classmates but doesn't want to be pigeonholed, because she found both science and the humanities stimulating. "It always seemed to keep my brain running in both fields," she said.

The number of students graduating from Los Angeles public schools has declined for two straight years even as enrollment in the 12th grade has been rising sharply, new state data show. The graduation slump began when California started requiring students to pass an exit exam before they could receive a diploma. The data caught educators by surprise after they were quietly posted on the state Department of Education website.

The weather is balmy, the local beaches are inviting, and so, naturally, San Diego State students are thinking about . . . accounting. Yes, accounting. It's become one of the hot courses on campus. Enrollment is up, one of the accounting lecturers has twice been named professor of the year, and several dozen students spent their summer mornings in a class poring over a 3-inch-thick tome titled "Federal Taxation."

Once they stood to inherit the world, or at least a tidy little corner of it. Now, staring into the abyss of the worst financial crisis in decades, California's MBA students are tempering their expectations, networking like crazy and looking for a Plan B or even C. "People come to business school to shoot for the stars," said Bangaly Kaba, 29, a second-year student at USC Marshall School of Business. "At some point, you have to look at what's in front of you because the stars aren't available."

California could run short of college graduates needed to keep its economy humming by 2025, a think tank warned in a report to be issued today. As a result, the state may not have enough teachers, computer programmers, scientists and other key workers to meet escalating 21st century demands. If current trends continue, in 16 years the state should expect 4 out of every 10 workers to earn at least a bachelor's degree, said a study by the Public Policy Institute of California.