Alaska’s Best Graduate Schools of 2021

Graduate school may be a critical step in your higher education, whether you are interested in expanding your knowledge, learning a specialization, or earning advanced credentials required by your profession. The best graduate schools in Alaska offer advanced degrees, such as master’s and doctoral degrees, as well as opportunities for independent research, mentorships, and professional networking.

Colleges and Universities in Alaska

The six colleges and universities in Alaska are largely located near Anchorage and Fairbanks, two of the state’s largest cities. However, the University of Alaska Southeast houses campuses in the island towns of Juneau, Ketchikan, and Sitka. While the tuition for Alaska’s largest universities, the University of Alaska Anchorage and the University of Alaska Fairbanks, offer competitive rates of $8,000–$9,000, the University of Alaska Anchorage’s student population is nearly twice the size, with nearly 11,000 students. This state also offers two private colleges, both with religious backgrounds, in Alaska Pacific University and Alaska Bible College.

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Those hoping to truly immerse themselves in Alaska’s wilderness may want to consider attending Iḷisaġvik College, which is a tribally-owned community college located in Barrow, the northernmost point in Alaska. Many of the degrees students pursue in Alaska fall in the science and social science fields, but students also have the option to obtain degrees in areas like religious studies, education, and liberal arts.

Alaska’s landscape is as vast as its history. The massive glaciers, thousands of miles of coastline, our country’s highest mountain peak, and wildlife that live among the people are only some of the features that have helped earn this state its nickname, The Last Frontier. Higher education students hoping to cross items off their bucket list like seeing the northern lights may want to pursue their degrees in Alaska.

For students hoping for a mix of adventure and education, learn more about Alaska’s higher education institutes, degree options, and top career paths.

What are Alaska’s Colleges & Universities?

Alaska’s Best Overall

The following list is composed of graduate schools, both private and public. We’ve identified 4 graduate schools in Alaska that satisfy the following three conditions:

It must be a non-profit institution.
It must be fully accredited.
It must offer doctoral degrees and a broad array of graduate degrees.

How do we determine Alaska's best graduate schools?

Methodology

The people affiliated with a school are ultimately what make it great. This is why influence gets at the heart of what is truly best in education. At the undergraduate level, the best colleges and universities are those with the highest concentration of influence. Our Concentrated Influence metric adjusts overall influence by size of undergraduate student body, thus allowing smaller schools to compete with larger schools so long as they have proportionately as strong influential faculty and alums.

But at the graduate level, the combined influence score of a college or university’s top academic influencers is the best indicator of academic excellence. Overall influence, and not influence controlled by other variables, thus becomes the best gauge of academic excellence at the graduate level. Where smaller size is an advantage at the undergraduate level (hence Concentrated Influence), graduate studies benefit from a large and vibrant community of graduate students, who promise to become the new generation of academic influencers.

If you are serious about finding the best graduate schools, you should be asking where the most influential professors are teaching, and whether their graduates themselves are advancing the school’s reputation for academic excellence. Most ranking sites rely on an opaque combination of reputation surveys and arbitrary performance metrics. Influence, as measured by our InfluenceRanking engine, provides a ranking that is free from bias, insulated from manipulation, and reflective of real-world educational outcomes.