The Western Interstate Commission for Higher Education, or WICHE, has launched a new collaboration of Native-Serving Institutions that is hoped to benefit more than five million people in the country who identify as Native American.
Funded by the Lumina Foundation, an Indiana higher education nonprofit, the initiative was officially launched in December. It is part of a three-year, $990,000 grant that will help cultivate a network within the 26 colleges and universities that have at least 10 percent Native students in their student populations.
“What we want to do is help institutions that are currently serving a high percentage of Native students and help them improve their outcomes,” said Joe Garcia, president of WICHE. “One of the biggest gaps exists between Native and non-Native students, where we see lower enrollment and certainly lower retention and graduation rates.”
According to WICHE’s data, only about 24 percent of Native students earn an associate’s degree or higher, which is about half the rate for White students. Native students also are also more likely to need remedial coursework. Only about one-third of Native students who make it to college graduate within six years. At the two-year colleges, which make up half of NSIs, this rate drops to about one-fifth.
The substantial population of Native students at these institutions qualifies them for Title III grants from the federal government, and this WICHE initiative seeks to optimize those resources through collaboration and maximize outcomes across the campuses.
In the current phase of the Lumina grant, WICHE is inviting the 26 NSIs to participate in efforts to collect and share data. Garcia said clear outcomes were crucial for securing the organization’s grantors.
“We are a very data-intensive organization,” he said. “Our grantors require us to show them results: How many students are we reaching and how are we moving the needle?”
