Room for everyone: Tribal college expands its reach

In 2019, Montana’s Blackfeet Community College launched its first four-year bachelor’s in nursing degree program with the goal of helping to address care shortages in the local Indigenous community. The program’s first graduate, who received her degree in 2023 and is now working as a long-term care nurse, said the college’s relationship-based approach helped her stick with her studies even through the disruption of the COVID-19 pandemic.

The Native American Community Clinic in Minneapolis is utilizing telehealth practices to treat both the medical and spiritual needs of the community and its patients. Although the "spiritual-meets-traditional care program" was already in place and had received funding before the coronavirus pandemic, it is now being implemented as a telehealth system with patients reporting that it has helped to create a sense of connection despite the adherence to physical distancing.

Tribal colleges like Tohono O’odham Community College provide an accessible route for indigenous students to pursue higher education, with tuition waivers available for students from federally-recognized tribes. Tohono O’odham’s enrollment has grown from about 700 in 2019 to more than 1,200 last year, but funding for tribal colleges is in jeopardy due to proposed federal budget cuts.

In an effort to address a lack of broadband access, Indigenous communities are working together, and with local organizations, to acquire funding to bring internet access to their communities and close the digital divide.

Community colleges such as Delaware Technical Community College and Lorain County Community College offer short-term certificate programs that are more accessible to adult learners and students with families. In 2022, the Delaware college awarded roughly 4,500 certificates and credentials.

Calbright College is a unique, tuition-free online community college that allows students to complete coursework toward certificates at their own pace. The college’s enrollment is growing by about 8 percent each month, and about 70 percent of students who enrolled in mid-2022 were still enrolled or had completed their studies nine months later.

Montana's Indian Education for All program ensures that both Native and non-Native students have the opportunity to learn the history and culture of local Indigenous peoples, such as through an experiential bison harvest.

South Dakota State University's Expanding the Circle program provides online graduate courses and tuition support to help faculty at tribal colleges update their credentials in line with new accreditation requirements. Since the program was rolled out, the retention rate for online graduate coursework has risen by roughly 30 percent.

At the Missouri Eastern Correctional Center, 10 individuals graduated from college with Associate Degrees as part of the Washington University Prison Education Project. Each student is required to have a high school diploma in order to apply, and must complete 60 credits to earn their degree. Beyond the provided education, the program has given incarcerated participants a sense of hope for their future.

Native American students are 237% more likely to drop out than their white counterparts. Organizations like the Native American Community Academy (NACA), are changing those statistics by creating curricula that focus on tribal identity values. These alterations have proved successful as graduation rates and college attendance have risen among Native American students attending NACA.