Alaska’s ‘brain drain’: myth or reality? (EXCERPT), Monthly Labor Review Online, May 2004

Alaska’s ‘brain drain’: myth or reality?

Jeff Hadland

A laska has one of the highest outmigration rates in the Nation. The general belief is that a disproportionately large percentage of Alaska’s young adults leave Alaska after graduating from high school or after completing some postsecondary education in the State. Also, there is wide concern that the percentage of Alaskans who continue their education beyond high school is among the lowest in the Nation.¹ This article presents data to quantify these phenomena, sometimes characterized as a "brain drain," using a variety of administrative data.

This article tracks a study group of more than 16,000 Alaskans, age 15–16 in 1994 (hereinafter, 1994 Youth).² It follows this group through their postsecondary education in Alaska and at out-of-State institutions and examines their employment status in Alaska.

Summary of findings

More than 62 percent of the 1994 Youth were still Alaskan residents in 2002, compared with 71.3 percent of the total Alaskan population.
A little more than 55 percent of the 1994 Youth group had some reported postsecondary education, nearly identical to the post-secondary education rate of a group of 17- and 18-year-old Alaskan youth in 2000.
Approximately 62 percent of the 1994 Youth group who pursued postsecondary education, did so exclusively in Alaska.
More than 84 percent of the 1994 Youth who had received their postsecondary education exclusively in Alaska were still Alaska residents in 2002, compared with 51 percent of the 1994 Youth who had received post-secondary education exclusively outside the State were Alaska residents in 2002.
Nearly 70 percent of the 1994 Youth group with postsecondary education had attended the University of Alaska at some time from 1996 through 2002.
More than 12 percent of the total 1994 Youth group earned one or more degrees as of the end of 2002.
Nearly 54 percent (8,659) of the 1994 Youth group were employed in Alaska in 2002 based upon a match with Alaskan unemployment insurance wage records. Average 2002 earnings varied by educational attainment, with highest average earnings in Alaska achieved by those youth who had earned a degree at the University of Alaska.

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Footnotes
1 See Ronald A. Phipps, Access to Higher Education in Alaska –Strategies for Success (The Institute for Higher Education Policy, prepared for the Alaska Commission on Postsecondary Education, December 2000). The paper reports that in 1998, 24.2 percent of 19-year-old Alaskans enrolled in college and that in 1996, Alaska enrolled 38.9 percent of recent high school graduates anywhere as first-time freshmen in a college or university, compared with 58 percent of high school graduates in the Nation.

2 Jeff Hadland, Alaska Brain Drain? Using Alaska UI Wage Records and Administrative Data to Determine the Long Term Education, Employment and Migration Patterns of Alaska’s Youth (Alaska Department of Labor and Workforce Development, Research and Analysis Section, December 2003).

Related BLS programs

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Education and the work histories of young adults.—Apr. 1993.

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