Anchorage Daily News

A national advocacy group has issued a report card on higher education in the 50 states, and Alaska's grades are down at the bottom of the class. If we're going to prosper as a state, we need to do a lot better.

We have the lowest graduation rate for first-year, first-time college students, according to The National Center for Public Policy and Higher Education's 2008 report. We're also at the bottom for the percentage of degrees awarded per 100 undergraduate students.

Fewer than one in five young Alaska adults (ages 18 to 24) is enrolled in college -- just barely more than half the national average. The percentage of Alaska adults with a college degree has gone up, but we're still slightly below the national average of 29 percent.

Alaska is one of two states where scores on college entrance exams have dropped. We're near the bottom among states for graduating students from high school in four years.

That's an embarrassing record.

Particularly troubling were the low marks Alaska got on affordability.

"Alaska's investment in need-based financial aid is very low," the report says. Alaska offers only 6 cents of aid for every dollar the feds supply to Alaska's needy students. (The most generous state puts in 89 cents per federal aid dollar -- 15 times more than Alaska does.) Alaska college students take out an average loan of $5,427 each year, more than double the national average.

The report doesn't have much data on the quality of higher education. It noted that Alaska students do better than the national averages on exams for professional licensing, teaching and graduate school admissions.

Alaska's state university is getting better. Its arctic research, petroleum engineering and nursing programs are well-regarded. Independently funded research at the university has more than doubled since the late 1990s.

UAA's Native science and engineering program is a culturally tailored effort that leads students on a path to well-paying careers. UAA also started an Honors College to attract top students. That effort is helped by the university system's Alaska Scholars program, begun in 1999. It offers $11,000 scholarships to the top students in the graduating class from each Alaska high school. At last count, a total of 3,800 students have gone to college in-state as Alaska Scholars.

The U of A has yet to become a first-choice option for many of the state's best and brightest, though. Alaska lost 1,880 more students to college Outside than our schools drew from other states and countries.

There are some understandable reasons Alaska is a net exporter of college students. We're a small population in an isolated and distant location, and many families still have roots elsewhere in the country. Alaska's state university system is still young compared with other states. It's natural that many top students would want to see the outside world and attend a more prominent school.

College isn't for everybody. There are still good occupations that don't necessarily require a four-year college degree. That's especially true in Alaska. Our resource development economy has a relatively high proportion of well-paying blue collar jobs. But long gone are the days when a youth could drop out of high school and get a decent paying job for life.

U of A knows it needs to do more than just produce pipe-smoking intellectuals with "Ph.D." after their names. During the late 1980s economic crash, the University took over the state's community colleges. President Mark Hamilton noted in 2007, "In the last 10 years, we've added 100 new degree and certificate programs that directly respond to high demand jobs, right here in Alaska."

So it's clear U of A is serious about work-force training. However, the state university is not yet a bustling incubator of innovation and magnet for world-class talent.

A strong, affordable university education system is critical for states to succeed in the high-tech economy of the 21st century. Probably more than any other state, Alaska relies on its state university to fill that role, and U of A is still a work in progress.

BOTTOM LINE: Alaska's record on college education looks bad compared to other states.

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