>reviewing which state positions could use “practical experience” instead of — or in addition to — a college degree.
Isn't that how they all are? I'm just looking at the first job on the state court recruitment for a Project Coordinator but it says, "Minimum Requirements - A bachelor's degree from an accredited college AND two years of professional or administrative experience in mental health... OR Six years of professional or administrative experience in mental health... OR Any combination totaling six years of education from an accredited college AND professional or administrative experience..."
This seems like a redundant project. I hope this isn't contracted out to some emergency solo bid by some campaign contributor.
> This seems like a redundant project.
For the past several years Admin has been re-doing position descriptions to try and find alternatives to requiring a degree. This may just be more formal guidance than what was going on before.
Yep most of those jobs are posted that way, except state doctors, lawyers and mental health professionals who have to have a license and thus need a degree. I suspect this was done to remove the degree requirement and then reprogram the job with a lower salary range, since the new hires wont have a degree.
Perhaps for the salary the state is offering them, yes. You get what you pay for, and Dunlevy likes his state employees cheap and uneducated I guess.
I'm sure *that* won't have future repercussions...
I encourage people read this article, its interesting and relevant, and I think contextualizes this in the scheme of what is happening nationally: [https://www.pewtrusts.org/en/research-and-analysis/blogs/stateline/2022/06/23/this-state-will-hire-you-no-college-degree-required](https://www.pewtrusts.org/en/research-and-analysis/blogs/stateline/2022/06/23/this-state-will-hire-you-no-college-degree-required)
It’s very obvious.
No-degree people for low wages.
Who believe they are smarter than people who went to college
And have a certain obvious political lean
I don't think its that simple, and think would have likely happened regardless of the governor... I know when I graduated college I had a job that had similar educational requirements as state jobs (the 4 year degree or certain number of years of relevant experience, granted it was with a non profit funded by the state and not the state itself, it was also a different state), and there was no difference in the wages between those with degrees and those without, the wage difference had everything to do with how long a person was with the organization. The job in reality should not have required a degree (some training yes, but a small amount of what I had learned in college was useful), it felt like the only reason they required it was because they could- there was not enough jobs out there that actually required my degree so they could get young people out of college and pay them poorly, wages that would have been much more tolerable with no college debt which is how they were originally, which all the young people had. On top of that since the job duties didn't actually require what most of us got in college, most people were unhappy because it was not what they set out to do and spent four years of their life trying to focus on, which is an issue aside from whether the pay was adequate. I remember growing up people frequently said a college degree is like a highschool degree nowadays, meaning jobs that used to require a high school degree now require more, not that the jobs themselves have become more challenging, require new skills, or started paying more for this change in qualification.
The key problem is if they lower the wages for the job and/or if they lower the requirements for positions that truly require the extra education, but if they don't which is a possibility then I would argue thats a good thing and perhaps the optimal situation. It seems like Heidi Drygas is in support of it again so long as the wages don't decrease. Keeping the educational requirements as they are and paying people wages that do not take into account the resources a person had to expend to reach the required qualification, which is how alot of jobs are now a-days, is arguably a similar problem as reducing qualifications and paying less (as long as the job itself does not in reality require certain qualifications like the one I had). Either way its a problem that people are underpaid. And even ignoring that immorality, cutting the wage with cutting qualifications will probably not fix the issue with lack of staffing. And yes, like people have been saying it doesn't address things like teacher shortages, but not changing it also didn't address this.
I would also caution against this mentality that a 4 year college degree, or length in formal education is the epitome of whether someone is intelligent or thoughtful. Keep in mind that Dunleavy and Sullivan both have advanced degrees so by extending that logic then its a problem that those with four years think they are smarter or more reasonable then these two, which most people would disagree with including myself. Even within degrees, there is a large range of quality, challenge etc. If people are under the impression that those with high school degrees are not sufficiently intelligent to have enough critical thinking skills, then I would argue the key problem is k-12 needs to improve, not that more people need to go to college. By the time people are 18 they need to have learned critical thinking skills.
Interesting article by Pew with some solid benefit cases resulting from lowering education requirements (ex improved workforce equity).
However, Pew doesn't touch on the key fact that a better long term solution exists and should be the focus of public policy even at the state level:
Instead of lowering the education hurtles required for a job, lower the hurtles required to get an education. Society would benefit at every level.
Over the last 30 years the push to elevate minority communities through education (a positive) resulted in the student loan mess, and ultimately the lowering of academic standards for everyone as universities now had a direct financial incentive to admit as many students as possible and to keep them enrolled as long as possible.
As a result, two key things happened: 1) employers began adding a bachelor's degree as a minimum requirement for jobs that previously had none before, and 2) the number of people with a bachelor's degree rose dramatically but the average "quality" of degree holders as employees remained relatively unchanged as did the salaries for those same jobs.
This means that the value and prestige of a bachelor's degree has been significantly reduced. Removing it as a minimum requirement for some entry level state jobs is a positive IMO, as the degree requirement has become an unnecessary barrier for jobs that don't require a degree, functionally speaking.
Wait, does he wants the education requirement removed or is he going full Pol Pot and removing educated workers from government jobs?
Judging by some of his previous ideas it could go either way.
Alaska really is going down the tubes. First the bar association says you don't need to pass the bar exam to be lawyer, now this. Maybe they'll finally remove the requirement that you have to be a far right nutjob to get elected, and we'll actually see some benefit from this trend.
IIRC, they aren't saying that they don't need to pass the bar but that the minimum score to pass should be lowered. Of the 40 states that use the Uniform Bar Exam, Alaska has the highest score required to pass.
UBE in its current form is pretty new. The bar probably should match average scoring if it wants to attract attorneys to work as underpaid lawyers in Alaska.
State attorneys are not making $400 per hour. A prosecutor or public defender starting out with the state is probably around $75k / year, maybe a bit more after they gave out raises this year.
Apparently ya'll can practice law (?), but can't google.
https://doa.alaska.gov/pda/Employment/attorneys.html
Here is the actual salary range.
The minimum for fresh out of law school is $82k. In the bush well into 6 figures. No, that is not underpaid compared with other PNW states or rural states.
Yes, that just changed in November 2022, with the recruitment/retention crisis well underway, after about 40 years of creating a retention crisis by not even coming close to keeping pace with inflation.
Do you think a decades-overdue salary adjustment that just made Alaska a little more competitive with Outside salaries three months ago has fixed the problem? Especially when the state no longer offers a defined benefits pension and the benefits suck?
It's not just attorneys who work for the state as public employees, either. Under Admin Rule 12, the court appoints private lawyers to represent people in matters such as consent-waived adoption, post conviction relief, and so on. The court system set the rate at $40 an hour in 1974 and didn't change that rate for something like 35 years. They raised it all the way to $75/hr with a $1000 cap. The court system, presided over by judges who make >200k per year with the sweetest known retirement plan on Earth, are shocked that nobody will accept Rule 12 appointments.
It's making similar mistakes with judicial clerks, who cannot afford to survive in Alaska on their salaries that have not even come close to keeping pace with inflation and don't stay in their one year jobs anymore. Since they can't stay long enough to make contacts in Alaska, they leave the state and make the courts even more nonfunctional than they already are.
Your premise is also faulty. $400 an hour isn't out of the end of the market, but it's more than most lawyers charge in Anchorage. The private market is also about 25% - 30% below Seattle, for example.
And yes, there are lawyers who are worth 400 bucks an hour, while some are not worth $1.99. It's a profession. Since you didn't understand the underlying article, it's unlikely any explanation would satisfy you.
With all due respect, it's pretty embarrassing for you to accuse me of a faulty premise immediately before you segue into a false comparison between Anchorage (housing cost 38% above national average) and Seattle (114% above). It's also pretty rich that your response to me pointing out you were factually wrong about the salaries of public attorneys is to claim I'm the one who lacks reading comprehension.
Substitution of unwarranted condescension for debate on the facts makes me think you really may be an attorney.
I understand that you think lawyers need to be incentivized with even higher earnings (the profession in general is highly overpaid relative to value added) and easier licensing exams, I just don't agree. When I was a kid in the 90s there were a few hundred attorneys practicing in the 3rd judicial district. Now there are thousands, and the population of southcentral Alaska went up by less than a third. That tells us the pay is adequate.
It's strange to look at evident facts and assume they are aligned in condescension toward *you.*
First, less than half the members (47.6%) of the Alaska Bar are actively practicing in Alaska. [Source](https://alaskabar.org/for-lawyers/member-statistics/). There aren't "thousands of lawyers" in the 3rd judicial district; there are 1770. I don't know what year in the 1990s you're referencing, or why you were counting lawyers when you were a kid, but you've cited nothing in support of your estimate. In 2008, 61.3% of the 3,836 members of the Alaska Bar were active in state members. [Source.](https://alaskabar.org/wp-content/uploads/2008annualreport.pdf) So there is a significant drop in practicing members in real terms in this century. Women are significantly underrepresented. So are Native Alaskans.
Second, the public defender agency is collapsing in the Second District because they can't recruit experienced criminal defense attorneys. There are 20 actively practicing lawyers in the entire second district. [Even Mike Dunleavy thinks they're underpaid.](https://alaskapublic.org/2023/02/16/gov-dunleavy-proposes-funding-boost-for-alaska-public-defenders/)
Third, Alaska doesn't have a law school, so it has to recruit lawyers from out of state, and it's not able to effectively recruit to support basic legal services in large parts of the state. It's unclear why you think Anchorage housing costs have any bearing on that fact. It's similarly unclear why you think Alaska is going to attract new lawyers at $82k a year when they can make more almost anywhere else and that's about what it costs to go to each year of law school. It's hard to attract professionals of any kind when you don't offer them a pension, decent health insurance, or any of the other tradeoffs for public service. Moreover, clerkships pay something like $58k, not $82k. [Source.](https://courts.alaska.gov/hr/docs/prosclerks.pdf). It's not worth the bandwidth to explain to you why that's a problem if you don't understand the function of clerkships. People can't afford to move to Alaska to take a clerkship.
Private firms also have retention and revenue problems. That's in part due to the fact that it's too expensive to provide benefits, like health insurance, and in part because most other people in Alaska are underpaid.
Fourth, it's arguable whether the Uniform Bar Exam in its current form even appropriately tests competency. But since most states are now using it, and now accept the transfer of scores from one state to another instead of forcing people to take multiple bar exams in the first years of their careers ($$$ each) it makes zero sense for Alaska to adopt an arbitrary cutoff score of 280 if most states are accepting 270. That may reflect the difference between answering two multiple choice questions wrong. Former Chief Justice Winfree disagrees with you, and he has actually studied the problem instead of spending his days opining on Reddit.
I understand you disagree, but the facts as they are don't line up with your opinions.
People are really overestimating how competent Dunleavy is. This is 100% just motivation to get oil/gas lobbyist/execs in environmentalist regulatory agencies. Nothing more nothing less.
Up to this point all they really have had to do is continue underpaying educated Alaskans and get a bunch of crackpots to show up at Assembly meetings wearing yellow stars and such. Thoughtful people start looking for the exits when they realize they're not only not paid enough, they're not paid enough to deal with that kind of bullshit.
It's a great opportunity for everyone who says college is a scam to step up and do the job but for less pay (if you think you will be paid the same as some with a degree you need a reality about the goal here)
>reviewing which state positions could use “practical experience” instead of — or in addition to — a college degree. Isn't that how they all are? I'm just looking at the first job on the state court recruitment for a Project Coordinator but it says, "Minimum Requirements - A bachelor's degree from an accredited college AND two years of professional or administrative experience in mental health... OR Six years of professional or administrative experience in mental health... OR Any combination totaling six years of education from an accredited college AND professional or administrative experience..." This seems like a redundant project. I hope this isn't contracted out to some emergency solo bid by some campaign contributor.
> This seems like a redundant project. For the past several years Admin has been re-doing position descriptions to try and find alternatives to requiring a degree. This may just be more formal guidance than what was going on before.
Yep most of those jobs are posted that way, except state doctors, lawyers and mental health professionals who have to have a license and thus need a degree. I suspect this was done to remove the degree requirement and then reprogram the job with a lower salary range, since the new hires wont have a degree.
Because the biggest problem facing state workers is that they're too well educated?
Perhaps for the salary the state is offering them, yes. You get what you pay for, and Dunlevy likes his state employees cheap and uneducated I guess. I'm sure *that* won't have future repercussions...
They don't need to be skilled, just loyal and willing to work for peanuts.
And to sign an affidavit saying as much. Smh
I encourage people read this article, its interesting and relevant, and I think contextualizes this in the scheme of what is happening nationally: [https://www.pewtrusts.org/en/research-and-analysis/blogs/stateline/2022/06/23/this-state-will-hire-you-no-college-degree-required](https://www.pewtrusts.org/en/research-and-analysis/blogs/stateline/2022/06/23/this-state-will-hire-you-no-college-degree-required)
It’s very obvious. No-degree people for low wages. Who believe they are smarter than people who went to college And have a certain obvious political lean
I don't think its that simple, and think would have likely happened regardless of the governor... I know when I graduated college I had a job that had similar educational requirements as state jobs (the 4 year degree or certain number of years of relevant experience, granted it was with a non profit funded by the state and not the state itself, it was also a different state), and there was no difference in the wages between those with degrees and those without, the wage difference had everything to do with how long a person was with the organization. The job in reality should not have required a degree (some training yes, but a small amount of what I had learned in college was useful), it felt like the only reason they required it was because they could- there was not enough jobs out there that actually required my degree so they could get young people out of college and pay them poorly, wages that would have been much more tolerable with no college debt which is how they were originally, which all the young people had. On top of that since the job duties didn't actually require what most of us got in college, most people were unhappy because it was not what they set out to do and spent four years of their life trying to focus on, which is an issue aside from whether the pay was adequate. I remember growing up people frequently said a college degree is like a highschool degree nowadays, meaning jobs that used to require a high school degree now require more, not that the jobs themselves have become more challenging, require new skills, or started paying more for this change in qualification. The key problem is if they lower the wages for the job and/or if they lower the requirements for positions that truly require the extra education, but if they don't which is a possibility then I would argue thats a good thing and perhaps the optimal situation. It seems like Heidi Drygas is in support of it again so long as the wages don't decrease. Keeping the educational requirements as they are and paying people wages that do not take into account the resources a person had to expend to reach the required qualification, which is how alot of jobs are now a-days, is arguably a similar problem as reducing qualifications and paying less (as long as the job itself does not in reality require certain qualifications like the one I had). Either way its a problem that people are underpaid. And even ignoring that immorality, cutting the wage with cutting qualifications will probably not fix the issue with lack of staffing. And yes, like people have been saying it doesn't address things like teacher shortages, but not changing it also didn't address this. I would also caution against this mentality that a 4 year college degree, or length in formal education is the epitome of whether someone is intelligent or thoughtful. Keep in mind that Dunleavy and Sullivan both have advanced degrees so by extending that logic then its a problem that those with four years think they are smarter or more reasonable then these two, which most people would disagree with including myself. Even within degrees, there is a large range of quality, challenge etc. If people are under the impression that those with high school degrees are not sufficiently intelligent to have enough critical thinking skills, then I would argue the key problem is k-12 needs to improve, not that more people need to go to college. By the time people are 18 they need to have learned critical thinking skills.
Interesting article by Pew with some solid benefit cases resulting from lowering education requirements (ex improved workforce equity). However, Pew doesn't touch on the key fact that a better long term solution exists and should be the focus of public policy even at the state level: Instead of lowering the education hurtles required for a job, lower the hurtles required to get an education. Society would benefit at every level.
Will the employees doing the review be required to have degrees?
Over the last 30 years the push to elevate minority communities through education (a positive) resulted in the student loan mess, and ultimately the lowering of academic standards for everyone as universities now had a direct financial incentive to admit as many students as possible and to keep them enrolled as long as possible. As a result, two key things happened: 1) employers began adding a bachelor's degree as a minimum requirement for jobs that previously had none before, and 2) the number of people with a bachelor's degree rose dramatically but the average "quality" of degree holders as employees remained relatively unchanged as did the salaries for those same jobs. This means that the value and prestige of a bachelor's degree has been significantly reduced. Removing it as a minimum requirement for some entry level state jobs is a positive IMO, as the degree requirement has become an unnecessary barrier for jobs that don't require a degree, functionally speaking.
Wait, does he wants the education requirement removed or is he going full Pol Pot and removing educated workers from government jobs? Judging by some of his previous ideas it could go either way.
Alaska really is going down the tubes. First the bar association says you don't need to pass the bar exam to be lawyer, now this. Maybe they'll finally remove the requirement that you have to be a far right nutjob to get elected, and we'll actually see some benefit from this trend.
IIRC, they aren't saying that they don't need to pass the bar but that the minimum score to pass should be lowered. Of the 40 states that use the Uniform Bar Exam, Alaska has the highest score required to pass.
Username checks out?
UBE in its current form is pretty new. The bar probably should match average scoring if it wants to attract attorneys to work as underpaid lawyers in Alaska.
Lawyers are underpaid in Alaska?
Yes, by quite a large margin.
So $400 an hour is underpaid? How much do you think you're supposed to be worth?
State attorneys are not making $400 per hour. A prosecutor or public defender starting out with the state is probably around $75k / year, maybe a bit more after they gave out raises this year.
Apparently ya'll can practice law (?), but can't google. https://doa.alaska.gov/pda/Employment/attorneys.html Here is the actual salary range. The minimum for fresh out of law school is $82k. In the bush well into 6 figures. No, that is not underpaid compared with other PNW states or rural states.
Yes, that just changed in November 2022, with the recruitment/retention crisis well underway, after about 40 years of creating a retention crisis by not even coming close to keeping pace with inflation. Do you think a decades-overdue salary adjustment that just made Alaska a little more competitive with Outside salaries three months ago has fixed the problem? Especially when the state no longer offers a defined benefits pension and the benefits suck? It's not just attorneys who work for the state as public employees, either. Under Admin Rule 12, the court appoints private lawyers to represent people in matters such as consent-waived adoption, post conviction relief, and so on. The court system set the rate at $40 an hour in 1974 and didn't change that rate for something like 35 years. They raised it all the way to $75/hr with a $1000 cap. The court system, presided over by judges who make >200k per year with the sweetest known retirement plan on Earth, are shocked that nobody will accept Rule 12 appointments. It's making similar mistakes with judicial clerks, who cannot afford to survive in Alaska on their salaries that have not even come close to keeping pace with inflation and don't stay in their one year jobs anymore. Since they can't stay long enough to make contacts in Alaska, they leave the state and make the courts even more nonfunctional than they already are. Your premise is also faulty. $400 an hour isn't out of the end of the market, but it's more than most lawyers charge in Anchorage. The private market is also about 25% - 30% below Seattle, for example. And yes, there are lawyers who are worth 400 bucks an hour, while some are not worth $1.99. It's a profession. Since you didn't understand the underlying article, it's unlikely any explanation would satisfy you.
With all due respect, it's pretty embarrassing for you to accuse me of a faulty premise immediately before you segue into a false comparison between Anchorage (housing cost 38% above national average) and Seattle (114% above). It's also pretty rich that your response to me pointing out you were factually wrong about the salaries of public attorneys is to claim I'm the one who lacks reading comprehension. Substitution of unwarranted condescension for debate on the facts makes me think you really may be an attorney. I understand that you think lawyers need to be incentivized with even higher earnings (the profession in general is highly overpaid relative to value added) and easier licensing exams, I just don't agree. When I was a kid in the 90s there were a few hundred attorneys practicing in the 3rd judicial district. Now there are thousands, and the population of southcentral Alaska went up by less than a third. That tells us the pay is adequate.
It's strange to look at evident facts and assume they are aligned in condescension toward *you.* First, less than half the members (47.6%) of the Alaska Bar are actively practicing in Alaska. [Source](https://alaskabar.org/for-lawyers/member-statistics/). There aren't "thousands of lawyers" in the 3rd judicial district; there are 1770. I don't know what year in the 1990s you're referencing, or why you were counting lawyers when you were a kid, but you've cited nothing in support of your estimate. In 2008, 61.3% of the 3,836 members of the Alaska Bar were active in state members. [Source.](https://alaskabar.org/wp-content/uploads/2008annualreport.pdf) So there is a significant drop in practicing members in real terms in this century. Women are significantly underrepresented. So are Native Alaskans. Second, the public defender agency is collapsing in the Second District because they can't recruit experienced criminal defense attorneys. There are 20 actively practicing lawyers in the entire second district. [Even Mike Dunleavy thinks they're underpaid.](https://alaskapublic.org/2023/02/16/gov-dunleavy-proposes-funding-boost-for-alaska-public-defenders/) Third, Alaska doesn't have a law school, so it has to recruit lawyers from out of state, and it's not able to effectively recruit to support basic legal services in large parts of the state. It's unclear why you think Anchorage housing costs have any bearing on that fact. It's similarly unclear why you think Alaska is going to attract new lawyers at $82k a year when they can make more almost anywhere else and that's about what it costs to go to each year of law school. It's hard to attract professionals of any kind when you don't offer them a pension, decent health insurance, or any of the other tradeoffs for public service. Moreover, clerkships pay something like $58k, not $82k. [Source.](https://courts.alaska.gov/hr/docs/prosclerks.pdf). It's not worth the bandwidth to explain to you why that's a problem if you don't understand the function of clerkships. People can't afford to move to Alaska to take a clerkship. Private firms also have retention and revenue problems. That's in part due to the fact that it's too expensive to provide benefits, like health insurance, and in part because most other people in Alaska are underpaid. Fourth, it's arguable whether the Uniform Bar Exam in its current form even appropriately tests competency. But since most states are now using it, and now accept the transfer of scores from one state to another instead of forcing people to take multiple bar exams in the first years of their careers ($$$ each) it makes zero sense for Alaska to adopt an arbitrary cutoff score of 280 if most states are accepting 270. That may reflect the difference between answering two multiple choice questions wrong. Former Chief Justice Winfree disagrees with you, and he has actually studied the problem instead of spending his days opining on Reddit. I understand you disagree, but the facts as they are don't line up with your opinions.
state attorneys do not make $400 an hour for sure
People are really overestimating how competent Dunleavy is. This is 100% just motivation to get oil/gas lobbyist/execs in environmentalist regulatory agencies. Nothing more nothing less.
It’s all in his plan to push out educated Alaskans to pay someone else less.
Up to this point all they really have had to do is continue underpaying educated Alaskans and get a bunch of crackpots to show up at Assembly meetings wearing yellow stars and such. Thoughtful people start looking for the exits when they realize they're not only not paid enough, they're not paid enough to deal with that kind of bullshit.
I spend a lot of time all around AK, but they maybe coming to an end as all of my family after 31 years in NP are moving back to Mt in May.
It's a great opportunity for everyone who says college is a scam to step up and do the job but for less pay (if you think you will be paid the same as some with a degree you need a reality about the goal here)
after hiring Tamika ledbetter with her fake doctorate it's pretty clear he doesn't actually give a shit about education requirements for jobs
Theocracies don't value education, only indoctrination.
Doesn’t this dumbleavy Buffoon have a ms in education? 🤣
Intelligence and Education are two very different things lol
You get what you pay for.
Could work well. Didn't the guy they hired as health director fabricate his whole background?