Post-secondary education success factors: Perceptions of Native American students

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Post-secondary education success factors: Perceptions

of Native Americanstudents

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Background:

In 1990, among American Indians 25 years and older, just 9 percent had earned a bachelor’s degree or higher (AIHEC, 2000).

Furthermore, a mere 3 percent held graduate or professional degrees (Pavel, et al., 1998).

This contrasts with the total population 25 years and older, in which 20 percent had attained a bachelor’s degree or higher, and 7 percent held a graduate or professional degree (Pavel, et al., 1998).

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Only 54 percent of the American Indian undergraduates enrolled stayed in college after the first year compared with 68 percent of undergraduates nationwide (Pavel, et al., 1998).

The three-year persistence rate of American Indian students was 33 percent compared with 49 percent for all undergraduates (Pavel, et al., 1998).

In "The Demographics of American Indians" Hodgkinson suggested that as many as 75 percent of American Indians who begin college, leave prior to graduation (Hoover & Jacobs, 1992).

Norbert Hill, Oneida educator, states that as high as 93 percent of postsecondary American Indian students drop out (Bowker, 1993).

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Of the ninety-seven degrees in UW- Milwaukee awarded in 1993-94, one of these was to an American Indian (University of Wisconsin System, 2001).

The ten year period from 1991-92 to 2000-01 resulted in 931 Doctoral degrees being conferred at UW-Milwaukee. Three of these were to American Indian students (http://www.uwsa.edu/opar).

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So out of this arises the need to determine what resources/ supports American Indian students need to be successful in their post-secondary schooling

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Question:

What factors do American Indian students at UW-Milwaukee perceive as being important to their academic success?

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Data Collection:

I created and posted on the internet, a survey that requested the students to rank factors such as; self, community, nation, family, children, etc. in importance to their academic success.

Additionally, the students were to respond to the question: “What factors would you contribute to you being successful in your schooling?”

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The participants:

Thirty of the 185 American Indian students on campus responded- reflecting 16% of the population

10 male/ 20 female

Equal number of stop-outs vs. continuous enrollment

01

2

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number of

students

Table Two: Time-out

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Table 1: Age Distribution

0

1

2

3

4

5

18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 30 32 33 34 44

age

number of students

24 full-time students 6 part-time students

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0

0.5

1

1.5

2

2.5

3

3.5

4

4.5

5

rating

Table Three: Category Ratings

mean

mode

freq

uenc

y re

port

ed

score reported

Parents reported importance of children

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T-test: importance of nation to success

Comparing the students’ responses to the importance of nation who labeled themselves with tribal identification to those who did not, the t-test was found significant at α = 0.01.

Of further interest is the responses of those students who did not identify themselves by heritage were found significantly greater at α= 0.05 to the neutral response of three. While students who did identify themselves by tribal heritage had a mean value of 2.478- a negative response to the importance of nation.

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Community:

Related to Tribal Nation, is the community. Fascinatingly, these responses were similar to those of the importance of tribal nation. The students who identified themselves by tribal heritage had a mean value of 2.696, while the students who did not identify themselves by heritage had a mean value of 4.857 to the importance of community.

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Hypothesis:

Possibility that disconnected students (those without a strong tribal cultural background) are acquiring a greater sense of identity through their educational experience and this is why the significance of nation is being expressed.

Alternatively, students with strong tribal backgrounds may be feeling the pressure from family and friends who are fearing the student will not return to home.

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Significance of Self

The fact that every responder who did not identify themselves by tribal heritage responded to the importance of self as ‘5’ immediately jumped out from the data.

Alternatively, the students who identified themselves by tribal heritage reported a score with the mean value of 3.074 to importance of self.

t-test found the difference in responses from the two groups to be significant at the alpha level of 0.01.

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The importance of studying and study habits emerged from the free response question.

From this, it may be valuable for American Indian communities to provide workshops in study skills for those students going on to college.

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For the future:

Discrepancy between numerical data and dialogue- survey will reflect this by eliminating the numerical and replace with verbal terms that will later be re-coded to numerics for data analysis

More information regarding the students tribal cultural background needs to be obtained to be able to determine if there is a genuine difference in what factors are perceived as important between the groups

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Questions