Alaska defunds scholarships for thousands of students ahead of fall semester | Hacker News Reader

Alaska defunds scholarships for thousands of students ahead of fall semester

nbcnews.com

91 pointscurtis57 comments

This is absolutely terrible, purely from the perspective from the students. Having your four years of hard work devalued like that, just because of a political move, must really suck.

Worst of all, it's past the matriculation deadline for most universities in the United States, so these students can't even attend other schools that have offered them scholarships, leaving them to either drop out or go into debt.

Well the oil revenues did fall down a lot. Alaska has no state income taxes. Someone has to pay for that, and killing the Alaskan universal (very) basic income is too unpopular of a move. This is something worth remembering once more countries and regions will try introducing UBI.

True, but the optics of this move are worse than some other alternative. A state representative was also quoted in the article saying that putting the education fund in the sweep was not necessary. Pretty sure they can reappropriate funding from somewhere else if they tried to (and it's not like their scholarships are particularly large, $3k to $4k a year scholarships given to a limited number of people will not break the bank).

Other states have no income taxes, and Dunleavy ran on protecting and growing the Alaska Permanent Fund. And as to your UBI FUD comment, why do we need to find a reason? Cutting public education is well inline with right winged US policy.

> why do we need to find a reason?

A reason for what?

This is seriously the most cruel twist of fate for these students who received merit scholarships to Alaska schools and accepted offers there.

My education was funded by scholarship and two part time jobs. I know for sure that without the couple thousands from scholarships I wouldn't make it. The pressure to quit school and focus on the next paycheck/bill was very high.

Now I'm (gladly) paying more in taxes to the state of California annually than I've ever received from scholarships. I think it's not a wise choice to trade off the future earnings for short term Permanent Fund dividends.

Many of those kids educated in Alaska universities will be later paying Californian income taxes also. It isn’t that simple, anyways, from the Alaskan government’s perspective (if you are concerned with just optimizing state revenue and not the moral problem of not serving your residents).

Cutting higher education funding and scholarships won't help with brain drain.

Sure, but it means economic growth or revenue increases are not the primary motivator for not cutting them.

Like every bureaucracy that is threatened, they will cut where it is most visible and most painful for the public. They will do this even if the cuts don't save much money. Cutting something hidden, like administrative overhead, just isn't going to happen.

Doing this the ethical way:

1. Use loans (bonds?) to cover the immediate shortfall for students that are currently enrolled or accepted.

2. Raise tuition on future students to better represent actual cost.

3. Eliminate departments that would take a loss. (students unwilling to pay the needed amount) Since this is a state school, there is also some responsibility to the people of the state: prioritize keeping departments that contribute to the industry of the state, with relatively few students leaving the state after graduation. So maybe keep geology and petroleum engineering, while eliminating sociology and art. Even computer science could be eliminated if those graduates nearly all leave for California.

The ethical way would be to not operate the government in a way where you hold your citizens hostage.

Public universities don’t typically have bonding authority without legislative authority to borrow and appropriations to spend.

Alaska is a land of riches. Even the most regressive regimes like Saudi Arabia are investing in higher education. Worshipping the cult of ignorance is a uniquely modern American thing.

“How to definitely lose graduates to the other 49.”

Given the distance, probable they'll stay gone. (though maybe that usually happens anyways, for those who are ambivalent about Alaska)

The core of the issue:

> The House Republican minority has said it will not vote for the reverse sweep (and other spending from the Constitutional Budget Reserve) unless the rest of the Legislature approves a traditional Permanent Fund dividend, which this year would be worth $3,000.

And:

> The rest of the Legislature is not willing to do that, because that dividend, combined with current levels of government spending, would require overdrawing from the Alaska Permanent Fund, reducing its value in the long term.

I guess party of fiscal conservatism ~has truly died~ never existed at all apparently.

It never existed.

It’s hard to argue that it never existed at all, because it definitely did at one point. But they have morphed into something else entirely whilst managing to keep the fiscal responsibility moniker in the minds of a lot of voters.

It never existed. “Conservatism”, as it as it is used in the US, has never referred to fiscal conservatism except whenever it’s convenient to an argument. Conservatism is and always has been about preserving the status quo.

I am genuinely interested to know more about this time when it did exist. Do you have some reading you could recommend?

Maybe pre-WW2.

Once in power, the most “principled” modern penny pinchers never seem to have a problem spending money. Nobody voluntarily gives up power, and power equals money.

It was never the party of fiscal conservatism. Notions to the contrary were a neo-conservative retcon. It never stopped being a party of bibles and social-conservatism.

The low taxes/low spending rhetoric started about the same time as the party embraced the religious right.

That really isn’t true, the republicans of Lincoln and even TDR’s time were fairly progressive socially (though they have always been pro big business). They didn’t become social conservatives until the mid 20th century. Claims like “they were never the party of” or “always the party of” need to be heavily qualified given how positions shifted over the last hundred years.

Opposition to slavery happens to be a case in which imposing morality on others is justified. But my point here is whether they're on the right side or the wrong side of an issue, one thing has always been true of the Republican party; they seek to regulate morality.

We could have a conversation about "parties switching", the southern policy, etc. But I don't think that's needed because no matter which way you slice it, the Republican party was never hands off on matters of society and morality. Some people like to pretend it was once some sort of live-and-let-live libertarian party, but that was never the reality of the party.

That is nowhere near accurate, nor very useful. Slavery was an institution that the Lincoln era republicans felt very strongly about eradicating, and they were otherwise fairly hands off. The progressive movement of the early 20th century (mostly TDR-style Republicans)was even more socially liberal.

And really it’s all irrelevant to who the republicans are today, no longer the party of Lincoln or TDR or even Ike.

> Slavery was an institution that the Lincoln era republicans felt very strongly about eradicating, and they were otherwise fairly hands off

The same people fighting to free the slaves also typically thought it would be ridiculous to let women vote. They simply were not the libertarians you imagine them to be. Social deregulation was not on the agenda.

> The same people fighting to free the slaves also typically thought it would be ridiculous to let women vote.

Not unusual sentiment for their time. Progress is relative to a current state in time, obviously.

> They simply were not the libertarians you imagine them to be. Social deregulation was not on the agenda.

They wouldn’t have to be social progressives (until TDR of course), just not regressive. However the republicans were back then, the democrats were worse.

Isn't this fiscal conservatism? Spending <= Income?

The point of the original comment is that it's the Republican party (which has tried to paint itself as the party of "fiscal conservatism") that wants to spend more money than is available from the Permanent Fund, and is holding other programs hostage to achieve this goal.

Not really; in the midwest, we'd call this eating your seed corn.

Only in the sense that you aren’t borrowing. It’s the equivalent of being in a cash crunch, and feeding your kids McDonald’s while cashing out your 401k to go on a cruise.

I suspect that much of the debate about "fiscal responsibility" is a political move to cut social services that the Republican party deems antithetical to their political views.

Of course when the defense budget comes up it's always not enough that we spend 700+B on our armed forces. If you look at the voting records of many Republican candidates, at least at the state and national level, it's hard to believe any of that rhetoric. The tax bill is just the most egregious example of such policies.

This is exactly it.

"Fiscal responsibility" basically means "we shouldn't spend money on things I personally don't agree with or find important."

It is a supremely selfish view that unfortunately makes for a compelling political talking point.

How much are we wasting preparing for a war that would be so devastating it may end all life on earth for at least the next 300 million years. It's like being strapped to the front of an out of control freight train.

A bunch of intellectuals can talk about fiscal conservatism, but a major political party is a party of vast swathes of the population. Even the term sounds like political science jargon for passionate young students. Voting energy is not sufficiently galvanized by something as icy as fiscal policy.

It's a good line for a large chunk of megadonors though.

Although that $5000 is a lot, it is a relatively small group impacted:

> Gonzales and 2,500 other students in Alaska lost the scholarship because the state is no longer funding it.

Also was it a scholarship or grant? Grants were cut in Illinois the same way. As a tax payer I’m also okay with that. Now, I’m not okay with the deadline. They should be given at least 12 months notice, OR at least prior to the registration period

> As a tax payer

Every man, woman, and child in the United States is a tax payer, unless they live off the grid, in the woods, in a cave.

Pretty sure my kids (4, 4, and 1) don't pay taxes.

If your four-year-olds have ever bought anything (from a vending machine) they've paid taxes.

And even they might have a clear and important opinion on topics like these, given that they might want to get an education at some point and would probably have an issue with being promised money to then have it taken away later through no fault of their own.

Do they purchase goods? Do you purchase goods on their behalf?

The point is every household is a taxpayer household. The statement "as a taxpayer" is not helpful.

Also the statewide sales tax in Alaska is 0%. Municipalities might have their own sales tax rates, though.

They do have corporate tax, which would raise funds from goods purchased from companies doing business in state.

FYI: there is no state income tax in Alaska. They pay Federal tax though.

I don't understand this point.

I mean Alaska is kind of special, with no state tax and a universal (very) basic income. Years of that has changed people's thinking.

There isn't really a substantial difference between grants and scholarships. Attempts to differentiate them usually winds up in splicing hairs, because there are always exceptions.

As a tax payer in my state I'd very much not be okay yanking the rug out from under kids educationally.

This isn't about politics, or it shouldn't be; these kids deserve to finish out their educations.

2,500 students in a state with a total population of less than 750,000 seems pretty substantial.

To put it in perspective, the cut is equivalent to something like 7% of all college-aged people in Alaska. As a proportion of the actual student population, it's presumably higher.

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