Native American student enrollment has been on the decline for the past decade, dropping 40 percent between 2010 and 2021, a loss of tens of thousands of students. Of the 15.4 million undergraduate students enrolled in fall 2021, only 107,000 were American Indian or Alaska Native, according to the National Center for Education Statistics.

Researchers argue that the small population is not as small as it seems, however, due in part to federal practices of collecting data on Native populations, according to a new report from the Brookings Institute, the Institute for Higher Education Policy and the Urban Institute.

Federal measures of race and ethnicity in postsecondary education data undercount the total population of Native American students, in part due to insufficient sampling, lack of data on tribal affiliation and aggregation practices that erase Native identities, researchers wrote.

“For too long, Native American students have been severely undercounted in federal higher education data, with estimates suggesting that up to 80 percent are classified as a different race or ethnicity,” Kim Dancy, director of research and policy at IHEP, told Inside Higher Ed. “This chronic data collection failure renders Native students invisible in federal data systems and prevents clear assessments of the resources necessary to support student success.”

In May 2024, the federal government announced new standards for collecting data on American Indian and Alaska Native (AI/AN) populations, which would improve the inclusivity and accuracy of data for students from these groups.

The Obama administration introduced similar changes in 2016, but they were never implemented under the first Trump administration in 2017. Researchers worry a similar pattern may follow under the second Trump administration.

“The second Trump Administration has demonstrated reluctance to prioritize data transparency, which could further jeopardize these efforts and stall progress,” Dancy said. “Without strong implementation of these standards, Native students will continue to be overlooked in federal policy decisions.”

“It is critical that the Trump administration allow the revised SPD 15 standards to remain in effect, and for officials at ED and elsewhere throughout government to implement the standards in a way that provides Native American students and communities with the same high-quality data that all Americans should be able to access,” report authors wrote.

State of play: Degree attainment for Native Americans is bleak, according to data presently available. Twenty-six percent of Native American adults in the U.S. hold an associate degree or higher, and only 16 percent hold a bachelor’s degree or higher, according to 2024 data from the U.S. Census Bureau. In comparison, bachelor’s degree attainment by all other races is higher: 20 percent for Latino, 25 percent for Black, 38 percent for multiracial, 40 percent for white and 61 percent for Asian American students.

Of the 58 percent of American Indian/Alaska Native students who enrolled in higher education beginning in 2009, over half (55 percent) didn’t earn a credential. In 2023, the National Student Clearinghouse Research Center reported six-year completion rates had fallen two percentage points among Native Americans, to 47.5 percent—21 percentage points lower than their white peers and 27 percentage points lower than Asian students in the 2016 cohort.

Data collection is not the only barrier to Native student representation and completion in higher education, researchers wrote, “but until data on Native American students are more accurate, accessible, and meaningful, it will prove difficult to address these issues,” which include affordability, disparities in access and retention, and a lack of culturally informed wraparound services.

Digging into data: Data collection at the U.S. Department of Education has several problems that disadvantage Native students more than other groups, according to the report. Native student data is often “topcoded” as Hispanic or Latino, essentially erasing Native student identities, filed under “more than one race” without further detail, or coded without tribal affiliation or citizenship.

While topcoding students as Latino or Hispanic or categorizing learners as more than one race applies to all racial categories, Native American individuals are categorized this way at a higher rate than any other major group, which diminishes their representation.

Additionally, ED independently makes decisions to not disaggregate or provide detailed data on racial and ethnic subgroups, such as topcoding Latino or Hispanic students, that is not modeled at other federal agencies, such as the Census Bureau and the Bureau of Labor Statistics.

The last time the Office of Management and Budget revised data-reporting processes for colleges and universities, which allowed individuals to identify as more than one racial group, final implementation took place in the 2010–11 academic year.

In the decade and a half since, Native American student enrollment has declined, and researchers say, “The limitations of ED’s student data made it challenging to discern whether this decline represented an actual change in enrollment trends or was due to the new reporting practices’ undercounting of Native college students.”

A lack of data impacts institutions, tribes and others tracking student outcomes, reducing opportunities to support learners, and the challenges may perpetuate continued misperceptions of Native students’ journeys through higher education.

New policies: In 2024, OMB created new federal standards around collecting data on race and ethnicity that would enhance data collection when it comes to Native populations. Federal agencies are required to create plans for implementation by September 2025 and be in full compliance by March 2029, leaving the Trump administration responsible for implementation of the revised standards.

OMB outlined three approaches for agencies on how they might consider presentation of aggregated data on multiracial populations:

• Alone or in combination, which includes students who identify with more than one racial or ethnic group in all reporting categories.
• Most frequent multiple responses, reporting on as many combinations of race and ethnicity as possible that meet population thresholds.
• Combined multiracial or multiethnic respondents into a single category.

This third option would be most harmful to Native students, because it would perpetuate undercounts, researchers caution, and therefore policymakers should avoid it.

Moving forward, report authors recommend ED and Congress collect and publish disaggregated data on Native American students, partner with tribal governments to increase data transparency and provide guidance and resources to institutions to improve their quality of data.

“We encourage the Education Department to continue seeking input from Native communities, including voices that have been historically excluded from policy-development efforts,” Dancy said. “Accurate data alone won’t eliminate the structural inequities Native students face. But without the data, we cannot begin to dismantle the inequities.”

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