By: Gresham Collom & Misti Jeffers
Did you know Indigenous college students accounted for only 0.7% of enrolled college students in 2020 (Keo et al., 2021)? Indigenous Peoples in the United States have long experienced a history of colonization, genocide, and racial oppression, and Indigenous students continue to experience barriers to access and success in postsecondary opportunities.
Some folks erroneously believe all Indigenous students go to college for free; but the reality is more complicated. Some tribal members have access to tribal or federal funding through the Bureau of Indian Affairs (BIA) and Tribal Nation funded education grants. However, controversial practices related to determining tribal membership, like establishing blood quantum, mean many Indigenous students are left out.
Even as some institutions, systems, and states have created financial aid opportunities (i.e., scholarships and grants) to support Indigenous students, students may not be aware of these opportunities. There is currently not a comprehensive and reliable resource for Indigenous students and other stakeholders to find reliable, easy to digest information on scholarships and grants across the United States.
The SSTAR Lab, in partnership with Dr. Gresham Collom, incoming assistant professor at the University of Minnesota, developed a project intended to connect Indigenous students with financial aid opportunities. We are inventorying financial aid opportunities created specifically for Indigenous students at every United States postsecondary institution, system, and state to create a panel dataset and searchable website tool. Ultimately, this tool will help facilitate college access for Indigenous students as a “one-stop shop” to search for financial support beyond tribal and federal funding.
We intend to release a final database in early 2025 but want to share information we think can help students, practitioners, and policymakers in the meantime. Over the next year, we will release a monthly “Snapshot” of financial aid opportunities for Indigenous students.” These snapshots will highlight the characteristics of financial aid programs and policies found in each state and reflect on interesting patterns we see in the data.
Please note, as we continue to reach out to administrators directly to verify our understanding of these financial aid policies and programs, the counts described in this initial post may change prior to the release of the final dataset.
In this first post, we offer a high-level overview of financial aid opportunities identified across the country to date.
How many states, systems, and institutions have financial aid opportunities for Indigenous students?
We reviewed every postsecondary institution (5,916), system, and state to identify financial aid opportunities for Indigenous students. We also collected institutional geographical information and policy and program characteristics (e.g., funding mechanisms and eligibility requirements).
Here’s what we found.
243 financial aid opportunities for Indigenous Students exist across the United States.
Of the total 243 opportunities identified, we found 20 state-level policies and programs located in 15 states and 11 system-level policies and programs in nine states. 117 institutions across 34 states advertise a total of 212 institutional-level funding opportunities.
These financial aid opportunities vary in their eligibility requirements and funding mechanisms. For example, in terms of funding type, we found 102 policies and programs that offer a set amount of funding per semester or academic year, while 40 are designed to cover tuition and fees, nine cover cost of attendance, 13 are designed to reclassify out-of-state students for in-state tuition rates, and 11 combine multiple funding types. The funding types of the remaining 68 identified financial aid opportunities are either unclear or use a different type of funding.
Keep an eye out for future snapshots throughout the year! We will provide more nuanced findings by state, including more details around funding mechanisms and eligibility requirements.
Please feel free to reach out to our project manager, Misti Jeffers (misti.jeffers@wisc.edu) if you have any questions on the project!