Program facts:
The UA Scholars program continues to keep Alaska's brightest high school graduates in Alaska and continuing their education at the University of Alaska. These students enrich the academic environment at UA as they develop in their roles as future leaders of Alaska. They also represent all the corners of the state and serve as ambassadors between their community and the university. The UA Scholars Program marks a turning point for Alaska as we stop the outflow of our number one resource.

• UA Scholars graduate at more than twice the rate of the university's students, on average. For Scholars entering in 1999, 58% have completed a bachelor degree, associate degree or certificate; 51% received a bachelor degree. In comparison, 25% of all UA students starting in 1999 have received a bachelor degree.

A note from President Hamilton:

The UA Scholars Program is designed to reduce the number of Alaska's high school graduates leaving for education and jobs elsewhere. We offer the top 10 percent of students in each qualified high school graduating class in Alaska an $11,000 scholarship to attend the University of Alaska as an incentive to stay in their home state.

Our progress in this arena has been remarkable. Six years ago, only 44 percent of our high school graduates attended college. The University of Alaska got 44 percent of those. Today, a full 50 percent of our high school graduates go on to college, and the University gets 55 percent of those. This is truly wonderful progress. Our small population base will never allow us to provide all of the workers in all of the skill sets we will need. But in a state with no income tax, every one of those imported workers will use the roads, use the schools, and collect the permanent fund dividend. It is certain that we are best served by training, educating, and retaining every single Alaska resident we can.

Some say that it is natural for youngsters to want to go out and explore. First off, it's not true. Nationally, more than 80 percent of students who go on to college go to college in the state where they graduated from high school. Second, there is something that can be done about it. Simply put, we have to tell them we want them to stay. More than 2,900 of our best and brightest have accepted the UA Scholars Award since its inception. A thousand young people, most of who would have gone “outside” and not come home, are home. We didn’t change the nature of those students; we changed their awareness and their opportunity. The icing on the cake is the little understood fact that many of our students take advantage of a wide range of exchange programs with universities in the lower forty-eight and with several foreign universities, so our students can have it all.

Today the UA Scholars are changing the University; tomorrow they will change the state.