Trump Wants to Cut Tribal College Funding by Nearly 90%, Putting Them at Risk of Closing
The Trump administration has proposed cutting funding for tribal colleges and universities by nearly 90%, a move that would likely shut down most or all of the institutions created to serve students disadvantaged by the nation’s historic mistreatment of Indigenous communities.
The proposal is included in the budget request from the Department of the Interior to Congress, which was released publicly on Monday. The document mentions only the two federally controlled tribal colleges — Haskell Indian Nations University and Southwestern Indian Polytechnic Institute — but notes the request for postsecondary programs will drop from more than $182 million this year to just over $22 million for 2026.
If Congress supports the administration’s proposal, it would devastate the nation’s 37 tribal colleges and universities, said Ahniwake Rose, president and CEO of the American Indian Higher Education Consortium, which represents the colleges in Washington, D.C.
“The numbers that are being proposed would close the tribal colleges,” Rose told ProPublica. “They would not be able to sustain.”
ProPublica found last year that Congress was underfunding tribal colleges by a quarter-billion dollars per year. The Bureau of Indian Education, tasked with requesting funding for the institutions, had never asked lawmakers to fully fund the institutions at the levels called for in the law, ProPublica found.
https://www.propublica.org/article/tribal-colleges-universities-trump-cuts-funding
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