Dunleavy announces Alaska medical school, state scholarships will be funded

University of Alaska Anchorage sign
The University of Alaska Anchorage, where the state’s WWAMI medical education program is based. The governor announced WWAMI and 17 other programs would be funded this year. (Photo by Jimmy Emerson)

Alaska’s medical education program and scholarships to attend college will be funded this year, announced Gov. Mike Dunleavy on Wednesday.

Dunleavy said he ordered his Office of Management and Budget to release funding for the WWAMI medical education program plus 17 other programs.

Kathryne Mitchell is a second-year WWAMI student. She’s glad about the announcement.

“We’re very excited that the funding for our program is secure for this year,” Mitchell said.

Without WWAMI, Mitchell would have to take on an extra $120,000 for four years of medical school — plus student loan interest.  She wants Dunleavy and the Legislature to secure long-term funding for the program.

“When this battle for funding for WWAMI comes up every year, we lose students — students who will go on to become excellent physicians. We lose them and they go train in other programs, where there’s more certainty as to funding. And then we don’t get them back as physicians in Alaska,” she said.

She’s originally from North Pole and wants to practice family medicine in rural Alaska.  She says the program benefits the whole state.

“For Alaska, it’s really, really important that we train home-grown students to become physicians here, because they’re the physicians that are going to stay,” she said.

The announcement allows more than $42.8 million to be spent on WWAMI and other programs that include funding to attend college through both $11.8 million in Alaska Performance Scholarships and $6.4 million in Alaska Education Grants. Oil spill prevention also received $3 million in additional funding.

WWAMI received $3.3 million. And reimbursements to municipalities to pay off their debt to build schools received $4.2 million.

Dunleavy’s administration previously had said that these programs could not be funded without the agreement of three-quarters of both chambers of the Legislature.

But Dunleavy said Wednesday that his administration reviewed this funding after a recent decision by a Superior Court judge. And this review led him to OK the spending.

That judge’s decision said that money in the Power Cost Equalization Endowment Fund was not subject to the three-quarters vote.

The administration said these programs received funding for this year’s budget before the money in the accounts used to fund them was swept into the Constitutional Budget Reserve.

Andrew Kitchenman

State Government Reporter, Alaska Public Media & KTOO

State government plays an outsized role in the life of Alaskans. As the state continues to go through the painful process of deciding what its priorities are, I bring Alaskans to the scene of a government in transition.

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