Upgrading in Alaska

Stepping to the podium at the University of Alaska in 1953, the commencement speaker made an eloquent plea: "Be bold!" Mining Engineer Ernest Newton Patty knew whereof he spoke. Apart from a first-rate mining school, which Patty himself had built up, the ill-equipped campus near Fairbanks was little more than a "moose college" for young Alaskans who lacked the brains or money to attend colleges Outside. Skeptics suggested that it might well be converted into a penal or mental institution.

When Engineer Patty finished his call for "maximum service to Alaska," the board of regents named him to succeed retiring President Terris Moore, a brilliant rescue pilot who (quipped the campus newspaper) "spent more time in the clouds than in the classroom." Last week there was no such complaint as President Patty, 65, announced his own retirement in favor of William Ransom Wood, 53, academic vice president of the University of Nevada. All things considered, the nation's northernmost campus (100 miles south of the Arctic Circle) has never been in better shape.

On to Point Barrow. The University of Alaska might dismay some Outside purists. "I wouldn't send my son here," concedes one faculty member privately, "but I enjoy the work immensely. What a challenge! It's like working in a slum." One reason: the university is obliged to accept any Alaskan high school graduate (at free tuition), has a 40% freshman drop-out rate. Unlike most state universities, it also has twice as many men (545) as women (274), no solace for half the men on 30-below winter nights.

Alaska's once rough-and-ready students have been so tamed that lads who used to brawl merrily in taverns now while away winter's "cabin fever" by placidly staring at TV's Maverick. If students still use car trunks as deep-freezers for fresh game, they seldom skin moose in the dormitories and hang the carcasses outside the windows. President Patty has even clamped down on beards, mukluks and Levi's; slacks and jackets are now fashionable. To those who protest, Patty snaps: "Fellow, civilization has caught up with you. I advise you to go on to Point Barrow."

Pioneering Chance. In his seven years, Patty has nearly tripled enrollment, doubled the faculty, added $7,000,000 worth of new buildings. More important, the university has really begun serving Alaska. It rolls out useful pamphlets, from "How to Cook Moosemeat" to "Hints for Wilderness Wives." Its four community colleges (Anchorage, Juneau, Ketchikan, Palmer) teach everything from aircraft maintenance to Tlingit Indian culture. To help exploit Alaska's rich resources, it rummages heaven and earth. The topflight Geophysical Institute has probably done more aurora borealis research than any other group in the world. The mining school, with its own mine under the campus, has taught 18,000 Alaskans how to find gold, uranium and tungsten. In the works: a new marine-science institute for studying a coastline longer than that of the rest of the continental U.S.

From its women's national championship rifle team to the promise of tripled enrollment by 1975 (a boon to stiffer entrance requirements), Alaska is on the upgrade in small things and large. It still has countless problems. With statehood, it lost its federal land grant, needs more room. Though full professors average $10,100 a year, the Fairbanks cost of living (60% higher than Seattle's) causes a complete faculty turnover every five years. Though Carnegie Corporation money is upgrading the humanities, they are still weak. Proud as he is of resuscitating the school, President Patty concedes: "There's a great deal left to be done here."

Incoming President Wood, experienced at a state school with similar problems, is not dismayed. An English literature Ph.D., and the organizer of Nevada's new desert-research institute, he says of Alaska: "This is one of the last pioneering opportunities for higher education to demonstrate how important it can be to the economy it serves."

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