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University can build state’s economy, UA’s Hamilton tells “Meet Alaska” Global logistics, rocket launches, interpretation of data from low-orbit satellites can be done with Alaskans trained in Alaska — or Alaska can continue as a colonial economy, University of Alaska president says Kristen Nelson PNA News Editor
The University of Alaska can educate the state’s best and brightest high school graduates, provide training needed by the oil and gas and related industries, collaborate in research projects and provide the basis for economic development in Alaska. Or, said University of Alaska President Mark Hamilton, the state can continue to have a colonial economy.
The potential is huge, Hamilton told the Alaska Support Industry Alliance Jan. 28 at its “Meet Alaska” conference in Anchorage.
But, he said, he discovered after a year of knocking on doors and talking to everyone who would listen that he can’t single-handedly turn the university into an economic and training powerhouse for the state. The university, he said, needs the help of all those industries which will benefit from a stronger university.
“So while your hired guns are making a point for your industry, I want you to put in a plug for the only chance that this state has for increased economic development. And that is full funding — for about the next five years — for its university. We can do fabulous things together,” he said.
Why should the industry care? Why should the oil and gas and support industries care about the level of university funding? Two reasons, Hamilton said: “Depending on whether your background is in finance or in operations I’ll appeal to you on both cranial lobes.
“You need economic development in this state or you’re going to face one more additional quarter of a century being the only game in town where this state can look for tax revenues. If you’re on the operational side, you as all other members of your industry have an aging work force. And we need to be able to provide the training for that work force.”
Universities drive economic growth Hamilton, a major general in the U.S. Army before he became the 12th president of the University of Alaska in 1998, said state universities are driving economic growth in other states — and are funded on that basis. In the oil price dip of the 1980s, he said, the three major oil and gas producing states in the Lower 48, Texas, Louisiana and Oklahoma, increased funding to state universities over the next 10 years by 57 percent. In that same period, Alaska increased its funding 2 percent.
Why, he asked, would you increase funding of your state university by 57 percent during an oil-price dip?
“Because those states had the kind of history, the kind of process industry, that had identified the state university as the instrument of economic development,” Hamilton said. He said that state universities founded after the Civil War with such designations as A&M and A&T after their names were specifically established to foster economic development.
It hasn’t happened in Alaska yet, Hamilton said, but the state has fabulous opportunities and the state can either have people come up from the Lower 48 to do the work — and take the money back with them — or industry can work with the university to train Alaskans to do the work and keep the talent and the money at home.
The first problem Alaska has to address, he said, is that other states keep the best and the brightest of their high school graduates in their own universities while Alaska has been dead last in its ability to keep its best and brightest.
That is why the university began a program of offering full-tuition scholarships to the top 10 percent of the graduating class of every high school in the state. Last year, Hamilton said, we got 275 out of 750 and there are already 400 signed up for the next class.
Bringing the whole team Hamilton compares that program to the nation’s G.I. Bill:
“I told people for the first 31 years of my (working) life that the most important piece of legislation every passed in our nation’s history was the G.I. Bill. And the reason was, it gave three and a half million Americans who wouldn’t have had a chance to go to college an opportunity to go to college. I think we’re still living off of it. I think it is the single greatest and most credible explanation for why America is where it is in the world today.
“In a very real sense, it isn’t quite fair. The rest of the world continues to compete with their historically educated elite. And we brought the whole team. If you ever need somebody to bolster an argument of the power of diversity, you just apply the G.I. Bill thing. Now we didn’t have the standards of diversity then that we’re getting now, but it proves the point.”
And that’s why, he said, the university’s program is aimed at the top 10 percent of every high school in the state, even though training may be “asymmetrical”.
“Bring the whole team, you’re going to be stronger — more ideas from more sectors and the like,” Hamilton said.
“So we’ve said the top 10 percent of every high school in this state. Yes there are asymmetric preparations in various places. Give me the top 10 percent of all them. Bring it in there so that Alaska can face this new decade, this new century, with the whole team.”
Alaska corporate programs In making calls on companies to talk about university programs over the last year, Hamilton said, he called on Alyeska Pipeline Service Co., where he was told that the university’s problem was that it lacked a single point of contact for training.
I can fix that, Hamilton said. He then told Alyeska that their problem was that they continued “to get surprised by things that are clearly annual training requirements. Why do these sneak up on you?”
The result of that conversation was Alaska corporate programs — and a contract that Hamilton signed with Alyeska in January.
And, he said, the university is already getting calls from other states about another partnership with industry, the Alaska Process Industry Careers Consortium.
That program, Hamilton said, addresses the problem of an aging work force. Industry said to the university: here’s how we’d like people to be trained, here’s what we want the curriculum to look like, here’s how far it should go, we’d like people in the program to end of with associate degrees, we’ll support some of the people going through it and talk to them and agree to a certain level of hiring of graduates.
“We said, we can do that, the university can do that,” Hamilton said. (See related story this section on BP Exploration (Alaska) Inc. scholarships for this program.)
The colonial economy On the economic development side, there are opportunities for the university to train Alaskans for new jobs in the state.
Alaska, Hamilton said, has had a colonial economy and many of you, he said, will be associated more with the mother land than with the colony.
Think of it this way, he said:
“Folks come up from the mother land, extract the natural resources, bring them back to the mother land and process them, bring them back, sell them to the colonists.” Colonists believe, he said, that the only place their children can get a good education is in the mother land, and once the children are educated, parents begin saving for their own retirement — again in the mother land.
There are three industries that are naturals for Alaska and the question is, will Alaska train its residents for jobs in those industries or continue to have a colonial economy?
Global logistics a natural Global logistics is a natural for Alaska, Hamilton said, because Alaska is about nine air hours from 90 percent of the developed world.
“Now nobody else can say that. There might be another theoretical spot, but you couldn’t stand on it, you know what I mean?
“Here you can stand on it. It’s a little chilly, but you can stand here.”
But, Hamilton said, is the work going to be done by Alaskans? “Or are we just going to bring people up and have them do it?”
Likewise, he said, rockets will continue to be launched from Kodiak because it’s a good place to launch lower orbiting satellites.
But, he said, are we going to train the people, do the support pieces and support technologies?
”Are they going to be Alaskans? Or are we going to have people come up from the Lower 48, launch the rockets, give us a buck and a half and go home?”
Data from low-earth orbiting satellites can be collected in Alaska 10 to 14 times a day, he said, versus twice a day in the Lower 48.
“We download it, without passing go, without collecting much more than $200, we ship that data right down to the Lower 48. It makes me furious.”
Ultimately, Hamilton said, “those beamed photons become the round logs, whole salmon and crude oil of the 21st century. We’re rushing colonialism to the 21st century with the speed of light.
“It’s got to stop. And we’re going to stop it.”
Research partnerships There’s another opportunity for the university, he said.
In the Lower 48, on the average, 72 percent of research done in a state is done by industry and 12 percent by the university.
But in Alaska, 51 percent is done by the university and 11 percent by the university. It’s another opportunity, he said, this time for research partnerships between industry and the university. There’s headroom, he said, without competition.
The university has to be moved forward, Hamilton said.
“I can tell you this. I tell you what I learned the first year. I understand work ethic. I visited every place that would let me in the door. Worked seven days a week as hard as I could work and I didn’t even come close. And what I figured out was, I can’t do it as one voice for the university.
“You need to have the people who utilize the product.”
The oil industry, the pipeline, the transportation industry — they all need to tell the decision makers in the state that money put into the university is an investment.
“This is an investment,” Hamilton said. “We have to do this. There is no other option for the 21st century.
“Global logistics is going to be here. Rockets are going to fly out of Kodiak. We’re going to be able to interrogate low-earth orbiting satellites — just as three quick examples. The question is, is it going to be done by Alaskans educated in their university?”
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