Discuss the challenges facing American Indians in Higher Education.

Ali El Samad
Paragraph Proposal
11/15/15
This project aims to address the challenges facing American Indians or Native Americans especially the reasons for low higher education intake, retention and graduation of the Native Americans. Research has shown that many American Indians graduate from high school but few enroll to post-secondary education and retention until graduation is also affected. According to the National Education Association in 2000, 71% of American Indians Alaska Natives had a high school diploma but only 11% had bachelor’s degree compared to 27% of Whites (nea.org).
The number one goal of the project is to find out the barriers that contribute to the lower higher education intake, retention and graduation. Secondly to find out solutions to the barriers or problems. This will also sensitize education policy makers and the federal and state governments to initiate appropriate programs that would effectively address the higher education challenges faced by American Indians. And in turn the number of Native Americans graduating from college would increase and the living standards of the general population of Native Americans would be upgraded.
The information in the project report was research from internet sources that focused on looking for literature and findings from various articles. The research was based on the main challenges that affect American Indians’ chances of getting into college and completion of bachelor’s degree. One such article was by Harrington, C. and Harrington, B. (2012) titled “Fighting a Difference Battle: Challenges Facing American Indians in Higher Education. In the article they have given various recommendations to education advocates and the government. The second article was by Hunt and Harrington (2010) titled “The Impending Educational Crisis for American Indians: Higher Education at the Crossroads.” They focused on the various barriers that affect the America Indians higher education enrollment and graduation including lack of administrative support from college institutions and stereotyping of the minority group.