Ok. In Alaska, can you carry into bars, schools, and universities?
In AK you cannot carry a loaded, concealed firearm in a bar. If the weapon is clear and a magazine is in your pocket, you are in compliance with the law.
Campus carry is determined by individual schools. I'm not sure how UA Fairbanks or UA SE treats things, but the UAA campus is ostensibly gun free (though the university police maintain a gun vault where students can store weapons and access them 24 hours a day).
Carry in schools is currently being debated and wending its way through the legislature. As is a nullification bill banning state and local LE from enforcing any new firearms laws from the federal government.
How does alaska compare with cost of living?
Cost of living is higher, though just how much higher depends on where you are in the state (ranging from fairly unremarkable in Anchorage to mind boggling out in some of the Bush villages off the road net). This is partially offset by the state's Permanent Fund Dividend -- rather than paying state taxes, the state pays permanent residents a share of oil industry revenue each year.
On the other hand, the petroleum industry and other natural resource based industries up here mean there are a lot more good paying blue collar jobs than where I grew up in the SE USA, so relative cost of living doesn't fall equally hard on everyone. A guy flipping burgers in Anchorage or Fairbanks will see his money go quite a bit less than it might elsewhere, but a mechanic working two weeks on and two weeks off on the North Slope oil fields will be making more than most, if not all, his counterparts in the contiguous United States.
What about having 1800 miles of canada separating it from the rest of the united states?
I guess that kind of depends on your relatives and in-laws . . .