Alaska News

Students glide over Alaska's realities

Eagle River state House Rep. Anna Fairclough generated considerable stir week before last when she questioned University of Alaska President Mark Hamilton during a House Finance Committee meeting about her perception of anti-development bias among university students and faculty. Both the tone and content of her remarks in the exchange left the impression that she resented that bias and thought that Hamilton ought to do something about it.

Hamilton, a retired U.S. Army general and firm advocate of free speech in the university, was quick to respond that he did not spend a career defending American freedoms just to turn around and violate them as a university president.

His response is most welcome, for there have been questions raised recently about sanctions against respected university researchers who have produced reports critical of sacred cows. Biologist Rick Steiner criticized a Sea Grant initiative on offshore oil development; emeritus professor Steve Aufrecht is investigating the terms of the BP-ARCO charter agreement with the university.

Fairclough has since written in a Daily News Compass piece that she had no intention of stifling free speech or advocating for the resource industry. Her concern, she wrote, is "the apparent lack of understanding by students of where our state revenue comes from. I have tried," she continued, "to engage Alaskans in a conversation about the alternatives they see to replace resource development for state revenue."

Hamilton has long attempted to nurture understanding of Alaska's economy among Alaska students, recently, for example, making his support of a Conference of Young Alaskans meeting contingent on their spending an hour studying Alaska economics, as he told Fairbanks Rep. Mike Kelly of the same House Finance Committee.

Fairclough and Hamilton are correct to be concerned about Alaska students' ignorance about Alaska's economic structure. My own experience teaching Alaska history for over 30 years suggests to me that students are woefully uninformed about the state's economic structure, both historic and contemporary, and strangely incurious about it, as if it's not really their concern. It's an ignorance that makes them vulnerable to implausible promises of economic diversity, and which exacerbates their difficulty in grasping why so many state leaders are unsympathetic to any environmental protection that might inhibit any economic development.

Historically, as today, in addition to very broad federal support, Alaska's economy is dependent on capitalization of development of its natural resources by Outside investors. Simply put, the money coming into the region from corporate backers creates the jobs and generates the production associated with resource development. This can be a large portion of the economy, as the one-third of the state's economic base comprising oil production, oil patch servicing and oil taxes today demonstrates. In previous eras, the salmon fishery, copper mining and gold mining played a similar role.

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Economies of scale have so far defeated attempts to diversify Alaska's economy beyond the local version of what some economists call "the resource curse," too much dependence on resource development. There are promising possibilities, represented by the airfreight operations at the Anchorage and Fairbanks airports, and by the growing contribution of the various activities of the 13 Native regional corporations and a few Native village corporations. But the best minds working with the best politicians have yet to devise a long-term plan for freeing Alaska from its classic dependencies, the AGIA gamble to the contrary notwithstanding. And if the jobs created by those dependencies evaporate with the current economic crisis, we will see again a significant outmigration from Alaska, as we did in 1985-86 when oil prices collapsed, and nine of the 15 financial institutions in the state failed.

Without manufacturing and agriculture, too far from markets to be competitive and with the Legislature unwilling to invest the dollars needed to attract more of the world's most creative minds to its university, the prognosis for Alaska's economic future is likely more of the same.

These hard facts should not discourage university and other students from insisting on development that is responsible toward the environment and that recognizes the wisdom of handing off untrammeled public lands and waters to future generations. But armed with good information and inclusive perspective on Alaska's economic past and present, students and others would be far more effective in arguing for such responsibility in their presentations to legislators, and in trying to craft alternative visions of Alaska's future.

Steve Haycox is a professor of history at the University of Alaska Anchorage.

Steve Haycox

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Steve Haycox

Steve Haycox is professor emeritus of history at the University of Alaska Anchorage.

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