UA – Keeping the Best and Brightest at Home

By Mark R. Hamilton
President
University of Alaska

Even though the number of recent Alaska high school graduates who attend the University of Alaska is edging upwards for the fourth consecutive year, Alaska is still 49th among the states when it comes to the percentage of high school graduates who go directly to college, and dead last in the nation in retaining its college-bound students. That's the bad news.

The good news is that we do seem to be making some progress, but there's plenty of room for improvement. In a year or so, the next time national statistics will be assembled, I think Alaska will move up a couple notches from last place.

The University of Alaska has great opportunities for growth in this situation. Only about 40 percent of our high school graduates are going to college and of that group, 50 percent are leaving, many to attend schools very similar to, or in many cases, lower in quality to the University of Alaska. While this is disheartening, it's clear that UA can compete successfully for these students by continuing to highlight the quality of academic programs and student life on UA campuses, as well as expanding the number and variety of programs offered.

Understandably, the number of Alaska high school graduates who go on to postsecondary education, and specifically to academic and vocational programs offered through UA, has been identified by university policy makers and state lawmakers as a high priority area of public interest. While recent high school graduates will always be a relatively small proportion of the enrollment at the campuses of the University of Alaska, they are a most important group because of what they represent for the future of Alaska.

Nationally, 60 percent of high school graduates go on to college. Of the 60 percent going on to college, 68 percent go to college at in-state public institutions, and the figure rises to 81 percent when private schools are included.

In Alaska, the percent of college-going high school graduates attending higher education is about 44 percent. Of the Alaska high school graduates going to college in fall 2000, nearly 50 percent attended UA, up from 40 percent in fall 1996. An additional one percent go to in-state private institutions.

The growing need to train Alaskans for Alaska jobs has generated a renewed focus on the need to expand Alaska's trained workforce in nearly every occupational category from construction to health care providers, engineers, teachers, and business executives. About 80 percent of the students who receive their postsecondary education in Alaska stay in the state to work, raise families and contribute to their communities while about half or fewer of the students who leave the state for college return to Alaska.

The end result of this ultimately is a brain drain. It has gone on for so long that some Alaskans seem to think that it poses no problem, especially if it now appears to be lessening somewhat. I see it as a major problem for a state that does not want to continue its colony status by having to import most of its work force and expertise into the foreseeable future. The imported workers cost Alaska employers tens of millions of dollars a year in recruitment, relocation and retention costs, and with no real ties to Alaska, the imported workers are less likely to stay long enough to make a significant contribution to the state.

This year the university told the Legislature that its goal is to increase the enrollment of Alaska high school graduates by 10% within three years, and to meet the national average within seven years. This goal is recognized as optimistic, and indeed there are reasons for optimism.

In a short time, we have made some significant progress. In fall 2001, there were 23 percent more Alaska high school graduates staying or returning here for their higher education. That translates to 349 students, representing 12 percent of the estimated number of high school graduates who go to college. I think there are five reasons for our success:

• We're working harder to recruit them as first-time freshmen
• We're encouraging them to consider transferring back to Alaska if they started their higher education in another state.
• The university's student retention rate is improving.
• There is an increasing number of high school graduates, so the pool is getting bigger.
• The university is expanding and enhancing the number and variety of program offerings to better match the needs of employers and the desires of students

Of the additional 349 Alaska students, 288 are attending as a result of actions the university has taken in the last three years to stop the brain drain. The other 61 can be attributed simply to the increased number of high school graduates between 1998 and 2001. The 288-student increase equates to UA attracting one out of every five students who, in the past, would have attended college out-of-state.

The UA Scholars program is a significant contributor to the increase in first-time freshmen and students transferring back to Alaska. There are nearly four times more top ten percent Alaska high school students enrolled as new students at UA in fall 2001 compared to fall 1998 (the year prior to the UA Scholars program).

The UA Scholars program is designed specifically to increase the number, quality and percentage of Alaska high school graduates attending UA. The program offers a four-year, $11,000 scholarship to the top 10 percent of the graduates of qualified high schools in Alaska each year. For the class of 2002, there are 901 young Alaskans deemed eligible for the scholarships, and so far 455 of them have indicated they plan to enroll at UA. I hope the number will grow even higher when the fall classes start.

UA Scholars has proven to be an important program in Alaska, which is the only state in the nation that has neither a needs- or merit-based scholarship program to benefit its high school graduates.

It's important to remember that 60 percent of all recent Alaska high school graduates do not go to postsecondary education, at least not within a year of graduating from high school. We need to continue working to bring that percentage down, and to persuade ever-greater numbers of young Alaskans to go to college for the training programs that will allow them to secure the highest paying jobs in the Alaska economy. Clearly there is a large pool of potential Alaska students who can fuel growth at the University of Alaska in the coming years. Achieving that growth is important not only to the university, but vital to Alaskans who want to participate fully in the economic, social and political life of the place they call home.