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T he Empire's May 8 article, "Study: Alaska worst in U.S. at producing college graduates," reported Alaska has among the nation's poorest college graduation rates for residents. This comes from a report, Making Alaskans More Competitive, released by the Alaska Commission on Postsecondary Education. The report recommends K-12 educators push young students toward college degrees.

There are social and economic conditions at play that factor into our resident workforce development. Simply turning residents into college graduates will not make Alaskans more competitive in our global economy.

The first condition is "brain drain," a phenomenon where the best and brightest leave a developing region for another of greater affluence. Alaska suffers from brain drain, according to a 2004 Alaska Department of Labor report, Alaska's "brain drain:" myth or reality?

Intuitively, brain drain hits rural areas the hardest. This will likely increase through public policies promoting college degrees for jobs that do not widely exist in rural Alaska. If we want stepwise economic development, we should not tell students from Kake, King Cove or Kipnuk that great fortune awaits them if they leave for four years, get a fancy diploma and return home. It is a hollow gesture which does not promote the current economies in these communities. Perhaps it is a useful policy if we are pushing for greater urbanization as the next generation of leaders must leave their homes to find work.

There are lucrative jobs in Alaska's resource sectors that are enhanced by vocational technical training rather than college degrees. Many of these jobs allow for individuals to return home for long periods of time, creating an opportunity for our rural Alaskans.

Juneau's McDowell Group reports the average annual wage in the Alaska mining industry is $80,000. Rich Hughes, Development Specialist with the Alaska Department of Commerce, reports an individual with additional training may make more than $150,000 annually as a miner. Anchorage's Northern Economics estimates a crewman aboard a Seattle-based pollock catcher trawler earns more than $166,000 annually fishing the Bering Sea.

The Alaska Workforce Investment Board aligns workforce development efforts in several of our resource sectors. K-12 should serve prominently in the Board efforts. Perhaps the high school dropout rate would not be as high if students found relevance in how their "academic" education was going to impact their "professional" future.

The second condition is Alaska's continual status as a colony for outside business interests. Corporate headquarters tend to draw the largest number of college graduates. With Alaska's top industries operated by nonAlaska companies, are we educating residents to fill jobs outside of Alaska?

One strategy to fully develop our natural resources for Alaskans, a multi-generational effort, is to find the balance where Alaskans enter an existing industry in a meaningful way, while establishing a business environment that increases corporate headquartering in Alaska. By increasing sector-specific Alaska participation, influence and wealth accumulation, we may begin to see the roots of ownership take hold here. As Alaska becomes the locus of decision-making over its own resources, college graduates will find more meaningful employment here.

I'm a proponent of higher education and ACPE is a crucial economic development tool. Promoting college degrees in general is misguided. A better program for ACPE is reinstituting partial loan forgiveness for Alaskans who complete advanced education on subjects relevant to our resource sectors, and who return home to work in those sectors.

While my K-12 teachers here in Juneau were earnest, caring professionals, I don't recall any promotion of economic opportunities in our local industries. Let's make sure we afford our children, especially in rural Alaska, a balanced perspective for their future so we can capture more of Alaska's wealth for Alaskans.

• Glenn Haight is a Juneau resident who worked in fisheries development for the state of Alaska. He currently works for the University of Alaska Fairbanks in the Alaska Sea Grant Marine Advisory Program.