Melvin Monette, director of graduate fellowship and special projects at the American Indian Graduate Center, says that more Native Americans with doctoral degrees in the STEM fields could have a significant impact on their communities.
Using data collected from the National Science Foundation, the Chronicle of Higher Education recently determined that the number of Native Americans receiving doctorate degrees is lower than it was two decades ago. According to the published data, only 149 Native Americans received doctorates in 2013.
The data was disputed in some quarters.
The trouble with it, says Dr. Malia Villegas, director of the Policy Research Center at the National Congress of American Indians, is that much of the data is self-reported and the sample is much smaller than the one her agency uses. She says that, based on her office’s data analysis, the number is actually significantly higher.
But like several experts who follow Native American trends in higher education, Villegas says the accuracy of the data matters less than one salient, indisputably clear fact: There are too few Native Americans and Native Alaskans with doctoral degrees. And as a group, Native Americans are grossly underrepresented in the STEM fields.
Native Americans are “2.2 percent of the population but only 0.8 percent of doctoral degree holders,” she says. “We still have a ways to go in terms of catching up.”
