Tribal college students are struggling.
In the fall, a study of nearly 500 tribal college students – conducted by the American Indian Higher Education Consortium (AIHEC) – found that 91% of students knew someone who had COVID-19. About 69% of students said they were likely to pay a bill late in the next three months, and 42% had lost a job or got a pay cut.
And yet a handful of tribal colleges are actually growing during the pandemic. Eight schools had an uptick in first-time student enrollment.
That isn’t to say tribal colleges and universities overall aren’t facing dwindling numbers of incoming students, like the rest of the higher education sector. Over three quarters of tribal colleges lost entering students, with first-time student enrollment dropping by 26% on average.
That’s a “huge” decrease, said Katherine Cardell, research and policy associate at AIHEC. In addition to cancelled classes, “students are struggling to respond to the pandemic, lack of resources at home, including internet. There was a fear of leaving home, less daycare, they were uncertain about employment, some were put on furlough, a switch to online classes, homeschooling their children at the same time as they’re trying to do everything else, having at-risk family members and wanting to take care of them … Those were some of the reasons given for disrupted enrollment.”
Still, the schools that are growing are growing by a lot. Of the tribal colleges with more students entering this fall, first-time student enrollment rose by an average of 45%.
“It was rather surprising to see that,” said Cardell, “and it was a good thing to see.”
