On the right path: over the past 20 years, colleges and universities continue to experience an increase in the number of American Indian/Alaska native students receiving degrees

Black Issues in Higher Education, June 17, 2004 by Valerie J. Shirley

In addition to the establishment of tribally controlled colleges and universities, many mainstream institutions have taken a closer look at sustaining and increasing the enrollment of American Indians and Alaska Natives through retention programs focusing on helping students transition to college life. The most often cited reason that American Indian students have difficulty in college is due to cultural discontinuity, according to an article that appeared in School Counselor titled "Between Two Worlds: Cultural Discontinuity in the Dropout Rate of Native American Youth." Many American Indian and Alaska Native students have resided in re mote rural locations on reservations throughout their lives and, therefore, experienced a type of culture shock while attending mainstream universities. David Anderson, an advocate of indigenous education, wrote in the McGill Journal of Education, "Schools are an imposed institution used to systemically instill the values and pass on the knowledge of those who operate them ... and in North America, only a small number of individuals are successful. As for the rest of them, they drop out of school, become inactive in their community and focus on consumerism."

A NEW ATTITUDE

The attitudes and perceptions among American Indians and Alaska Natives regarding receiving a college education have changed and are changing. As tribes embark on the notion of sovereignty, there rests a shared goal to instill the importance of increasing file college graduation rates among American Indian and Alaska Native students. Consequently, there has been an increase in the number of community college students transferring to four-year universities. And as mentioned earlier, there seems to be a shift toward a younger student body, ms well as an increased male enrollment. According to an article in Black Issues In Higher Education in 2000, the study, "Creating Role Models for Change: A Survey of Tribal College Graduates," revealed that 91 percent of students who graduated from the nation's 33 tribal-run colleges and universities in 1998 either had secured a job or decided to further their higher education.

Additionally, the development of the American Indian College Fund; the Tribal College Journal; the World Indigenous Nations Higher Education Consortium and the Alliance for Equity in Higher Education; and the establishment of cultural learning centers at institutions, were created to raise awareness and help accommodate the cultural values of indigenous students into their academic studies.

As college completion rates among American Indians and Alaska Natives continue to rise, the potential of this often overlooked population is highlighted, as well as the need for ongoing reformation efforts to better understand the diversity of these populations and the challenges they face both maintaining their indigenous culture and embracing that of mainstream America's.

About the Population

* There are 505 federally recognized tribes and 365 state-recognized tribes in the United States.