The benefits of a degree are not obvious to people who live on this remote island. Families have a    1     lifestyle, hunting walruses, whales and other sea animals in the spring, and gathering berries in the summer. The largest employer is the school system;     2    , there are only a handful of jobs in fishing, oil and the airlines that connect the island to the mainland. There isn’t much demand for anything else and more than a quarter of adults are     3    .

Today two villages remain with a population of just 1,400. People there are used to the     4    landscape and climate—in the summer, fields of grassy frozen ground     5     from snow-capped mountain ranges to the stony shorelines, but in the winter the sun disappears, there is a lot of snow, and polar bears arrive on ice floes. Leaving the island is not an option, as a ticket on a bush plane costs $400, a week’s earnings for many islanders. The sense of     6    is strong. When a whale is killed, the houses and school empty as everyone races to the beach to take a share of the meat.