quote:

Originally posted by pianojuggler:

quote:

Originally posted by Steve Miller:
What would happen if Alaska eliminated their state universities all together?

Maybe they could partner with another state, like Washington, to offer in-state tuition to their residents at another state's universities.

But, last I heard, Washington's universities are near capacity.

And that's a hell of a long way to travel to go to college -- forget coming home for spring break or Thanksgiving.


So.... I suspect thousands of kids will get shut out of access to higher education. That's not good.


On the other hand, Amazon is concerned about the sources of high-tech talent entering the workforce. Maybe they and other companies could set up mass scholarship programs. Unfortunately, that would then drain Alaska of talent.

There are proportionally a lot of Alaska students at my daughter's small liberal arts college in Oregon. I imagine, but don't know, that that's true of all the small liberal arts colleges with good reputations in Oregon. There are at least three that I know of between Portland and Salem. And I also was led to believe that Alaska is well-represented in the student population at the University of Oregon.

Alaska is unique. They have a small population and a skewed economic model (based almost entirely on oil revenue). They have a lot of satellite campuses and/or online courses in order to reach students outside of the major cities, and those students are poor and often indigenous. Joining with Washington wouldn't help meet these needs and, as pj says, it would drain Alaska of talent.

I wonder if you could encourage people to go the other direction? Students from the Pac NW get in state tuition or some other economic incentives to go to Fairbanks and have an adventure?

What I don't undestand, but maybe someone can help me: it sounds like citizens have come to expect a large payout every year from the Permanent Fund, and that money can't be used for anything else...? I don't fully understand it. But I do know the PF was established around the time of the pipeline, when oil prices were at their peak, with the expectation that oil revenue would continue at high levels. Sounds a lot like state pension plans, where the model assumed that the rate of revenue via investments would remain at historically high levels.

We're not actually talking about depleting the fund. They could fund the entire deficit out of a piece of the fund's annual payout. But Dunleavy wants to enlarge the payout while cutting the rest of the budget.

I wonder if he'll allow the universities simply to recoup the cuts in higher net in-state tuition. Then the most price sensitive "customers" will not go to college, or will go out of state to a different kind of school. Alternatively, he could simply say that we're cutting all the waste and cap tuition. That will gut the system, of course. As a Republican of today's ideology, he'll probably choose the latter and be completely impervious to the evidence of system collapse as it come in. He'll also deny that higher education is an "industry" that pays a rather large social return within the state. His successors will have to live with the mess. Oh, as will the citizens of Alaska. But they'll have their socialist "guaranteed basic income" go up!

Maybe they should just shut the whole education thing down. The voters don’t like it and would rather collect the cash. If they need any educated people they can import them from the lower 48.

Or they can start voting Democratic.

Well, that's exactly what is going to happen, in a slightly less draconian way. My very rough back-of-the-envelope estimate is that tuition will rise by $4,000 per year in one fell swoop. The number of students will naturally fall, and the poorer ones will be closed out completely or will have to borrow substantially more. The overall quality of the teaching and research mission will decline as the system loses its best (most mobile) people. What will be left is low-quality, teach-em-how-to do-low-level-jobs (AKA jobs-training) kinds of schools.

Over time, average incomes in Alaska will decline, both because of a talent drain and because of the expense of "importing" good people to do needed jobs.

If the exodus is anywhere near large and quick, I would expect to see Alaska move into recession unless oil prices go up by $25-$40 a barrel. Higher education is an industry, and this is a gut punch to that industry in all the major cities (Fairbanks, Anchorage, Juneau). Take maybe 5% of your most talented workforce out of those cities and watch interactions pull down incomes all over.

Can't wait ...

I would expect that universities in the Pacific northwest are already trolling for the best scholars/teachers/IT people/engineers/doctors etc.

Never mind....

This just drives me nuts. It's a better outcome than the original cuts, but why yank the universities and their students through this wringer in the first place? I love how he's all moral and principled about balancing the budget, etc., until the polls come in and the recall initiatives gain traction.

What would/ will happen? A collapse of the middle class.

quote:

Originally posted by Nina:
Never mind....

This just drives me nuts. It's a better outcome than the original cuts, but why yank the universities and their students through this wringer in the first place? I love how he's all moral and principled about balancing the budget, etc., until the polls come in and the recall initiatives gain traction.

Still draconian.

I'm wondering about the state scholarships already promised to students for fall term, then yanked away as part of this. I haven't found anything that indicates whether they've been reinstated.

Yes, still draconian.

Yeah, but it's more like the slow boiling frog now.

And, for faculty and students, it gives them time to bail out. There was really no feasible way to do that for September.

Get your applications out now, everyone!