By: Misti Jeffers
This post continues our blog series sharing information on financial aid opportunities for Indigenous students across the United States. We highlight details of 24 funding opportunities we found across four Mid-Atlantic states (New Jersey, New York, Pennsylvania, & Virginia).
Access to information about college affordability and financial aid is a key piece of the puzzle in efforts to empower students making informed college choice decisions. Yet, 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.
In early 2025, Indigenous students will have access to our publicly-available interactive website tool to search for funding opportunities they are eligible for. In the meantime, we wanted to share information we think can help students, practitioners, and policymakers through our monthly blog.
As we identified funding opportunities, we also documented eligibility requirements (e.g., tribal affiliation, degree type, enrollment status, etc.) and funding mechanisms (e.g., funding type, amount, and selectivity). And for institutional-level opportunities, we collected institutional data (e.g., locale, tuition). Read more about our project methodology and overall findings here.
There are only two state-level opportunities (New Jersey and New York).
New York, Pennsylvania, and Virginia have institutional-level funding opportunities.
We did not identify any system-level funding opportunities in these four states.
One State-Level Funding Opportunity in New Jersey
In New Jersey, the WIOA Native American Tuition Assistance Program provides up to $8,000 to qualified applicants pursuing degree and certification programs. This funding opportunity is an example of how states can apply federal funding to operate state-level programs supporting Indigenous students.
Based on the information provided on the New Jersey Commission on American Indian Affairs website, it is unclear how the state identifies “qualified applicants” (e.g., if there is a merit requirement or if students must be in-state residents) or how applicants apply for funding. Nor do we know if funding is awarded once or annually. The website does provide contact information for the New York/ New Jersey Indian Council WIOA Employment and Training. Notably, this funding opportunity is available to students from state and federally recognized tribes.
Twenty Funding Opportunities in New York (1 State-Level and 19 Institutional-level)
New York also has one state-level policy: the New York State Indian Aid Program, which has existed since 1953 and provides grants of up to $2,000 per year for full-time students (funding is pro-rated for part-time students).
There are aspects of this funding opportunity that are comprehensive, including being available to high school graduates and those with a high school equivalency diploma. And recipients can use funding at any accredited postsecondary institution in New York, including collegiate and noncollegiate (e.g., trade schools) programs.
However, students cannot use funding for certain types of courses, like remedial noncredit, or repeat courses). And eligibility is limited to New York residents who are also enrolled members or the child of an enrolled member of a New York state tribe— including members of the Iroquoian tribes (St. Regis Mohawk, Oneida, Onondaga, Cayuga, Seneca Nation, Tonawanda Band of Seneca, and Tuscarora), the Shinnecock tribe, and the Poospatuck tribe.
Despite being a relatively small award, students are required to prove they are maintaining a 2.0 college GPA by submitting their grades and a new request for funding every semester. This requirement likely introduces undue administrative burden to students.
We also found 14 New York institutions that offer a total of 19 funding opportunities for Indigenous students. For a full list of New York institutional funding opportunities, please refer to our draft dataset. We are not able to determine all eligibility requirements for each of these opportunities. For example, 18 funding opportunities do not advertise if students must be in-state residents.
Notably, only two of the 19 funding opportunities provide full tuition waivers (the Sloan Indigenous Graduate Partnership (SIGP) at SUNY College of Environmental Science and Forestry and the Lenape Scholarship at Union Theological Seminary in the City of New York. And 13 are considered selective, meaning they are only available to one or a few students who meet eligibility requirements. Tribal affiliation is fairly comprehensive across funding opportunities, with 12 allowing for any tribal affiliation, including self-identification. Only 7 limit eligibility to enrolled tribal members.
Two Institutional-Level Funding Opportunities in Pennsylvania
We identified two Pennsylvania institutions with funding opportunities for Indigenous students.
The Ehrhardt Lang (1957) Scholarship at Albright College is an endowed scholarship awarded annual to one student pursuing environmental studies with a preference for a Native American student. No other details are known about this scholarship, including the funding amount.
The ESU Native American Scholarship at East Stroudsburg University of Pennsylvania is a renewable funding opportunity that provides half the cost of tuition. Applicants must prove tribal membership in a federally recognized tribe and be enrolled full-time. There is both a merit requirement (must have a 3.5 high school GPA or 3.0 transfer GPA) and financial need requirement.
One Institutional-Level Funding Opportunity in Virginia
We found one institutional-level funding opportunity in Virginia: the Dr. Barbara Lockee Native American Tribal Honors Scholarship at Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University. This is a one-time scholarship for Sophomore, Junior, and Senior students who participate in American Indian and Indigenous Community Center activities and demonstrate academic merit (3.0 college GPA). Tribal affiliation requirements are broadly defined, with applicants being required to submit either a tribal enrollment card or letter of support from their tribal community. Students are also required to respond to essay questions. The funding amount is unknown.
Call to Action: Three ways you can support our project
As we await the release of our publicly available website tool for students, there’s three ways you can stay involved:
- Access our draft dataset of currently identified financial aid opportunities for Indigenous students. If you see a financial aid opportunity that is no longer active, or if you are aware of any opportunities we did not include in our list, please email us to let us know!
- Keep an eye out for future snapshots throughout the year. Subscribe to the SSTAR Lab newsletter to have updates sent directly to your inbox!
- Share our posts with your networks, especially students who may be eligible for funding opportunities.
Please feel free to reach out to our project manager, Misti Jeffers (misti.jeffers@wisc.edu), if you have any questions on the project!
*Please note, as we continue to reach out to administrators directly to verify our understanding of these financial aid policies and programs, information described in this post may change prior to the release of the final dataset.