Small world. The service I work for in Houston has an agreement with U of Alaska to take their students on for internship as part of their praticum. It's long, involved, and generally has them working harder than most of our full time employees.

For what it's worth, the Alaska paramedic students are often the best I've worked with, student-wise. Good enough that we've convinced several to stay and hired them on full time - and I can't think of ANYONE else we'd hire "straight out of school."

Like another poster said, you're probably confusing EMT (the basic training) with the longer, more involved, more rigorous Paramedic level training. Easy to do... we're all "ambulance drivers" to the public (and most hospital staff) anyway.