Experts gathered during a webinar on Wednesday hosted by the College Fund in partnership with the Brookings Institution and the Institute of Higher Education
Dr. Leander McDonald
The report, “Native Higher Education Success Strategies: Strengthening Policies, Respecting Tribal Sovereignty, and Leveraging Data to Address the Decline in Native American Higher Education Enrollment,” identifies strong barriers, including systemic underfunding, data challenges and lack of policy support for Tribal Colleges and Universities (TCU) and Native-serving institutions. Recent laws targeting diversity efforts have made the challenges even more difficult, creating additional barriers for Native students to succeed.
The decline in Native American enrollment in higher education was one of the key issues discussed during the webinar. According to Robert Maxim, a fellow at the Brookings Institution, Native American student enrollment has dropped by 40% since the 2010-2011 school year. The statistic highlights the urgency needed in addressing the educational crisis for Native communities. The decline, he said, is partly attributed to the systemic flaws in how data is collected and represented, adding that the 2010-2011 school year is so significant because it was the first time students were allowed to identify as more than one race in higher ed data.
“Native American people are multi-racial and multi-ethnic at higher rates than any other group in the U.S,” said Maxim, who criticized how the Department of Education collects and aggregates data leading to confusion about how much of the decline in Native students is due to them attending college at low rates, “or being counted as something else in public data.” Maxim added that about 80% of Native students get classified into a category other than American Indian or Alaska Native in federal education data making it difficult to understand the scope of the problem and develop sound policies.
Mamie Voight, President and CEO of the Institute for Higher Education Policy, stressed that Native scholars and communities must be integral to the policy development process.
“Native scholars have unique and essential insights into the challenges and circumstances that Native students face,” she said. “Their lived experiences can bring perspectives that non-Native researchers simply can’t.” Native scholars, she added, not only have the research expertise, “which is often grounded in and centered in native research approaches, but they also have rich lived experiences that can bring perspectives to these policy questions in unique and important ways,” Voight added.
Dr. Leander McDonald, President of United Tribes Technical College, said that the sovereignty of tribal nations is closely aligned with the education of their people. He emphasized that empowering Native communities through higher education is the key to addressing broader societal issues particularly community-based participatory action research.
“Sometimes, you need someone from the community to bring you in, even if you’re Native,” he said. “It’s about trust-building,”
McDonald stressed the importance of policy development that aligns with the needs of Native communities and called for ongoing education and collaboration between tribal nations, states, and the federal government. He said that making higher education a priority for tribal nations should be the focus.
“Strategic investment in higher education builds capacity for tribes to address broader needs like housing and healthcare,” he said, adding that graduate education in particular, is crucial for fostering leadership and creating systemic change within Native communities.
“It’s not realistic to think we can do this alone. We need to do it with our non-Native friends and relatives who are here to help us do this good work,” McDonald said. “It’s really about working together. It’s an investment from the tribes, state, and federal governments to ensure our students have the resources to obtain their higher education.”
