Should Alaska cut state university funding by 41 percent?

That is what they have done, in order to boost the Permanent Fund Dividend payments to the citizenry.  Here is the closing segment from my Bloomberg column:

I see Alaska’s decision as reflecting two broader trends in the U.S. First, a lot of small educational institutions are closing, consolidating or drastically cutting back, most of all in out-of-the-way places. Second, regions are diverging, both economically and culturally. More and more educated people are moving to the major cities.

You may have mixed or negative feelings about these two developments. Taken together, however, they could lead to a bunch of state schools on the chopping block. I suppose it’s fine to complain about this outcome, but far better would be to address the underlying trends.

There are things government could do if it were bold enough. How about a series of state-specific visas to foreigners, designed to encourage them to settle in Alaska and other underpopulated states? Alaska’s population could well rise to more than a million, and then the benefits of a good state university system would be more obvious, including for cultural assimilation. In fact, how about a plan to boost the population of Alaska to two or three million people? What would it take to get there?

That’s my biggest worry in all this: that that the diminution of the University of Alaska amounts to a kind of giving up. Alaska is supposed to be the American frontier, a place for taking chances. It is a sign of defeatism if the state has now decided that its main task should be mailing out dividends to its residents. The animating spirit should be one of science and exploration, as might be enabled by a well-functioning university system.

The University of Alaska in Fairbanks is rated among the world’s top science institutions for studying the Arctic, a region that might well grow considerably in importance, in part due to climate change. A well-developed and well-educated Alaska is a kind of option on future Arctic development and also on geopolitical influence. If new frontiers are opening up, then Alaska — and America — should want to be ready for them.

We really do need dynamism to keep our institutions going.  Allison Schraeger put it well on Twitter: “a preview of our UBI future.”

Comments

Comments for this post are closed