Tribal Colleges Are The Answer, Say Indian Leaders They’re Better At Fighting Poverty Than Other Schools Are
Already overwhelmed by ballooning enrollments and shrinking budgets, tribal colleges are bracing for even bigger shortfalls as welfare reform forces more Indians to seek additional education and job training.
Leaders of the Native American colleges, including one in Washington state, urged Congress and the Clinton administration Tuesday to spend more money on what they say has proved to be one of the most effective tools for moving Indians out of poverty and into higher education.
“A wide variety of data shows that of Native American students that start in mainstream institutions, 90 percent drop out,” said Robert Lorence, president of Northwest Indian College on the Lummi Reservation near Bellingham.
“We deal with that 90 percent. Of those students who graduate from a tribal college, then go back to a mainstream institution, you have 60 percent to 70 percent success,” he said.
A new report by the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching, released Tuesday, outlines the success stories among the 30 tribal colleges spread across Arizona, California, Michigan, Minnesota, Montana, Nebraska, New Mexico, North Dakota, South Dakota, Washington and Wisconsin.
“For hundreds of years, this nation failed to address the critical needs of American Indians,” the report said. “Today, tribal colleges are offering the reservations and tribal communities the chance to build knowledge, skills, confidence and pride in a way not possible for non-Indian institutions to offer.”
Total enrollment in tribal colleges nationally has more than doubled, from about 10,000 in 1989 to about 25,000 today.
“Despite overwhelming obstacles, America’s tribal colleges are educating thousands of our people, providing them with perhaps their only chance at economic self-sufficiency,” said Janine Pease-Pretty On Top, president of Little Big Horn College in Montana.
Lorence helped start the community college at the Lummi Reservation in 1983, beginning with 75 students. Enrollment there now stands at about 650.
“In that 13-year period, we have increased tenfold. It has kind of leveled off the last three years, but that is primarily because of budget and facility problems. There is a significant … need,” he said.
In addition to the main campus, the school provides services at 20 other reservations in the state.
“If we had more dollars, we could provide considerably more education. The need is very real on most of these reservations,” he said.
The Tribally Controlled Community College Assistance Act of 1978, as amended in 1986, authorizes Congress to spend as much as $5,820 in federal money per Indian student at tribal colleges. But currently, the federal government provides only $2,890 per full-time Indian student.
At Northwest Indian College in Washington state, that covers only about 45 percent of the cost per student. The rest is covered in the form of competitive grants, primarily from private donors.
“When we started, we were at a much higher percent. Even though Congress has from time to time added more money, it has always been catch-up. There has never been a way to catch up with the growth,” Lorence said.
The biggest spurts of growth may be yet to come as welfare reform requires recipients to continue their education or seek job training.
“There have been a lot of people who have been able to get their needs met through welfare who didn’t approach education, and now they are going to be forced into education,” Lorence said.
The two-year college prepares students for four-year colleges. It also has specialized programs in natural resources management, computer training and cultural studies. The biggest emphasis is training in basic skills.
About 85 percent of his school’s students are from low-income backgrounds and eligible for federal financial assistance of some sort, he said.
“A very high percentage have not completed high school. … Probably 70 percent of our students come to us with some sort of basic skills deficiency - reading, writing and math,” Lorence said.
“I’m assuming welfare reform will include some additional funds for training, but I haven’t seen where that is or how it will come from the colleges.”
xxxx SCHOOLS ARE LIFELINES DURING WELFARE REFORM Associated Press WASHINGTON Nearly 30 years ago, the first college run by an Indian tribe opened in Arizona to help Navajos train leaders. Now there are 27 such institutions enrolling more than 24,000 students from Michigan to Washington, down through the Plains and into California and New Mexico - a pace the colleges’ presidents contend is outrunning federal funding. And they warn that recent welfare reform will only add new burdens to these mostly rural colleges. Welfare reform is an “added pressure that we hadn’t really anticipated,” said Janine Pease-Pretty On Top, president of Little Big Horn College in Crow Agency, Mont. She and other presidents released a report Tuesday prepared by the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching backing their assertions. Born in an era when American Indians started asserting their identities more aggressively, the colleges have been economic lifelines for people suffering from poverty and unemployment. In recent years, they’ve seen an enrollment surge, with total enrollment in the mostly two-year tribal colleges shooting up from about 10,000 in 1989 to more than 24,000 in 1996. However, annual federal support - which is based on student population - has remained at about $27 million since 1995, although President Clinton wants to raise that amount by $3 million next year. That support figures out to about $2,890 per full-time student - less than the $5,820 authorized in the Tribally Controlled Community College Assistance Act of 1978. Because the tribal colleges lack state support, they rely on federal help and private contributions, like the $22.2 million that W.K. Kellogg Foundation, based in Battle Creek, Mich., recently announced it will give to the colleges over five years. The House Appropriations Committee has yet to consider the Interior Department budget, which includes the college funding. But Rep. Ralph Regula, R-Ohio, chairman of the Interior subcommittee, has made the lower-grade tribal schools a priority.