Alaska's 'brain drain': myth or reality? A variety of administrative data are used to determine if the long-term education, employment, and outmigration patterns of Alaska's youth are draining Alaska's labor force, causing 'brain drain'

Monthly Labor Review, May, 2004 by Jeff Hadland

More than 6,200 of the 1994 Youth attended the University of Alaska at some time from 1996 through 2002. Of those youth, 34. 1 percent earned credits, and the remainder either withdrew from their course or courses, received an incomplete, or failed. Nearly 70 percent of the 1994 Alaska Youth that attended a postsecondary institution attended the University of Alaska.

More than 12 percent (1,989) of the 1994 Youth group had earned one or more degrees or certificates, or both, as of December 2002. From 1996 through 2002,838 of the youth earned one or more degrees and certificates of all types from the University of Alaska.

Residency and current employment status varied significantly depending upon the location of reported postsecondary education activity. Those 1994 Youth who had reported both in-State and out-of-State postsecondary education had the lowest current Alaska employment and residency, with only 25 percent of those youth residents of Alaska in 2002 and 18 percent reported working in the State in 2002. (See table 3.)

The number (and percent) of 1994 Youth who attended a postsecondary institution varied significantly by place of residence (See table 4 and chart 3). Rural areas had representatives among both the lowest and highest postsecondary participation groups. Lowest postsecondary participation (less than 45 percent) was reported in the North Slope Borough, Northwest Arctic Borough, and Bethel Census Area and the highest rates (more than 60 percent) were reported in Valdez-Cordova Census Area, Denali Borough, and Dillingham Census Area.

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The 1994 youth in the urban areas of Anchorage, Fairbanks and Matanuska-Susitna attained the largest number of postsecondary degrees or certificates, and urban areas generally had higher rates of attainment. However, the Aleutians West Census Area and Denali Borough both had high rates of degree attainment, but with very small total numbers. In general, rural areas fared poorly in terms of degree attainment, with the North Slope Borough and Wade Hampton having less than 2 percent of their youth population reporting that they had achieved a degree or certificate as of 2002.

Postsecondary education, 2000

The 20,413 of Alaska's youth age 17-18 in 2000 were matched with University of Alaska and National Student Clearinghouse files to identify their participation in postsecondary education. (See table 4 and chart 4) Their participation mirrored the 1994 Youth group, with a 55.1-percent rate for those attending one or more postsecondary institutions. Longer term tracking of the 2000 Youth group will likely result in higher postsecondary education participation rates than the 1994 group.

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Although only the most ambitious 17-year-old would have had time to earn a Bachelor's degree by the end of 2002, more than 140 youth in this group had earned certificates or Associate degrees by that time.

For those youth who had received some postsecondary education, as of 2002, two-thirds had received that education exclusively in Alaska. The remainder received some postsecondary education outside the state, with 12.4 percent continuing their education exclusively outside Alaska.