Alaska Education

Alaska's far flung school districts, in urban communities and small villages, are bound together today through the Internet, which allows for extensive access to resources within the state and world wide. 

Great distances between communities prompted as early as 1939 establishment of the Alaska Central School based in Juneau, which provides free home schooling by corresondence courses for thousands of students, grades kindergarten through high school. In 1999 alone, Alyeska Central School served some 3,500 students at all grade levels. Students participate for a variety of reasons, from a specific preference for home schooling to inability to attend public school, for medical reasons or because the student is traveling.

The University of Alaska, founded in 1917 in Fairbanks as Alaska Agriculture College and School of Mines, by a special act of the Alaska Territorial Legislature, is today a multi-campus university. The university's statewide system, created in 1975, gave the Anchorage and Juneau campuses their own central staff and chancellor, although the statewide president and administration remain in Fairbanks. For information on specific campuses and updates on all university events, see http://info.alaska.edu/. 

Through campuses at Anchorage, Fairbanks and Juneau, plus smaller facilities in communities statewide, and distance delivery systems, thousands of students study vocational, undergraduate and graduate level courses, through the statewide system. 

Alaska Pacific University, a private liberal arts college adjacent to the University of Alaska Anchorage campus, also offers undergraduate and graduate school degrees in a number of fields.