- Details
- By Tribal Business News Staff
- Higher Education
Native American enrollment in colleges has fallen off by 37% since 2010 — more than double the national average decline in higher education attendance rates during the same time period.
That’s according to a Feb. 11 report by the Brookings Institution, a Washington, D.C.-based research nonprofit. The primary culprit could be poor data: the report attributes the decline in part to “significantly undercounted” Native American students. Over-aggregation muddies the waters in figuring out exactly how many Native students are attending college, where, and for how long.
All of that data is critical for identifying upward or downward trends in attendance and mounting appropriate responses to those trends through outreach and support services. It can be difficult to tailor support if colleges and universities can’t be sure who they’re trying to reach in the first place, according to the report.
The problem is significant for Native students who identify with multiple racial backgrounds. The report found that as many as 5% of undergraduate students identify as American Indian or Alaska Native in combination with another race or ethnicity — five times higher than those who identify exclusively as Native American.
To better support Native American students, higher education institutions need more accurate and less aggregated data. Brookings points to a potential solution in recently revised federal standards under the Office of Management and Budget for data gathering on race and ethnicity. The updated standards propose ways to enhance the inclusivity and accuracy of data on Native students, such as including multiracial students and counting tribal affiliations with more granularity.
Specifically, the revisions propose either expanding counts to include students who only partially identify as Native American, or separating specific combinations of identities without “topcoding,” or prioritizing, a single racial identity among them.
“Good data are critical to understanding Native American students’ needs, supporting them effectively, and working to improve their access to and persistence in higher education,” the report states.
The revisions were first introduced in 2024 and are required to be in place by 2029. Once implemented, improved federal data could offer tribes better insight into their own members’ successes and challenges, as well as direct federal dollars to the biggest gaps in funding and positive student outcomes.
The report emphasizes that education is central to the federal government’s trust and treaty obligations to tribal nations and Native American people. Providing easily accessible and accurate counts for Native students supports these obligations, the report notes — and is a crucial next step in getting Indigenous people back in school.
“It is critical that the Trump administration allow the revised standards to remain in effect, and for officials at ED and elsewhere throughout government to implement the standards in a way that provides Native American students and communities with the same high-quality data that all Americans should be able to access,” the report notes.
