The pursuit of applied climatological knowledge has a history of two millennia. The biggest boost to the corpus of knowledge was in the World War II military experiences of those faced with solving atmosphere-related operational problems. The World War II generation has retired and has not been replaced by persons with such hard-fought experiences; therefore, formal education is the route to the advances of the twenty-first century. Unfortunately, three trends are combining to limit the nature of collegiate education in applied climatology. First, few applied climatology courses and exceedingly few advanced applied climatology courses are in existence. Quite telling is the relative lack of textbooks. After Oliver (1973) and Mather (1974), no general applied text appeared until 1997 (Thompson and Perry). Second, courses in applied climatology are offered largely in atmospheric science and geography departments and are mainly populated by those majors. Applied climatology is an admixture of knowledge from atmospheric and non-atmospheric disciplines. Vital, specific instructor knowledge outside of the atmospheric sciences well might be limited by the discipline of the instructor and the knowledge input to other disciplines quite restrained by small numbers of "outside" students. Third, recent Internet accessibility of climatological data might have serious drawbacks for applied climatological education. Huge amounts of data are now free or priced modestly. All disciplines are able to instantaneously download these data. Lacking specific training as to the nature of the data and the breadth and scope of applied climatology, Internet users are in danger of making unwarranted assumptions as to the quality and appropriateness of various data sets. To insure a strong future of applied climatology, we suggest that considerable effort be concentrated in the development of interdisciplinary courses (in terms of instructor perspectives and student population) and related textbooks.