Why all the subterfuge?

Dear Gov. Parnell,

When you announced your plans to offer merit-based in-state college scholarships to every single Alaskan who takes certain courses and graduates high school with a grade average better than a C, we were happy at first. After all, giving Alaska's young people opportunities is exactly the same as giving Alaska an opportunity. Plus, like most Alaskans, The Concerned loves getting free stuff. But then we started thinking, and the more we thought, the more concerned we got.

Alaska's high school students already have many options to help them pay for college, some need-based, some merit-based. The UA Scholars program offers $11,000 scholarships broken up over five years to the top 10 percent of Alaska's high school graduates. The Alaska Advantage Education Grant offers $500 to $2,000 to qualifying students per academic year, and gives preference to students entering high-demand fields of study. And even though, judging from your first State of the State address, you're not too keen on the federal government, federally-funded programs still offer gobs of money for Alaskans who want to improve Alaska by improving their own chances in this economy.

What's more, every year, Alaska gives hundreds of dollars in cash to each and every Alaskan -- with no strings attached! Commonly, Alaskans associate Permanent Fund Dividend checks with taking advantage of kick-ass deals on consumer goods (hopefully necessities), affording high fuel and food prices, and paying off large credit card debts. So we're pretty concerned that your plan will further deceive Alaskans into thinking they can't use that money to pay for college. We, The Concerned, think that every dollar spent in the yearly PFD sale frenzy is a dollar wasted on Alaska's future. And we have no proof, but we also suspect it means the PFD isn't as important as people keep saying.

If Alaskan parents put, say, $650 from each of their child's first 17 PFD checks in a regular old savings account (assuming an interest rate only slightly worse than today's), it will mean roughly $11,100 by the time college rolls around -- no matter what a kid's grades look like!

The UA College Savings Plan and the Alaska Education Trust even make it easy on parents who, like The Concerned, didn't take enough math in school to figure out how much will accrue at the end of 17 years of incremental saving at a constant interest rate, don't know the first thing about mutual funds or composite interest, and have no idea what "Series I" refers to.

Aside from all our doubts about your plan because of programs already in place, we're still on board. We think it's a really clever way for the state to give money to the UA system without actually increasing its budget appropriation. That'll totally make the universities work harder at attracting Alaska's students. Maybe if the scholarships continue long enough, eventually Alaskans will be able to attend law school in-state. Just as D students will work harder (or whatevs) to earn C's to qualify for free tuition, Alaska's universities will have to get better if they want to increase their revenue stream and keep up with their continued goal of relying less on state funding.