University of Minnesota students demanded the school expand the Native American tuition program. The school system doesn’t have the funds, though. From MPR:
Students and activists protested in the freezing cold to urge the University of Minnesota to follow through on promises to tribal communities. At the top of their list was an expansion of a tuition program that they say too few can access.“[It] is kind of frustrating and hard for the students that are here already and aren’t getting the support that we feel like we need,” said Laila Gourd, a sophomore from the Spirit Lake Nation in North Dakota.A new tuition support program for the U’s campuses, including the Twin Cities, began last fall, but it has limits.The university’s Morris campus has had a full tuition waiver program for all American Indian students since its inception, as stipulated by federal legislation and Minnesota statute due to the site’s history as a former boarding school. In 2021, the university announced the Native American Promise Tuition Program to extend tuition support for Native students attending its four other campuses.At the time, University president Joan Gabel said the “program is a meaningful step to increasing access and continuing to improve retention and graduation rates while closing opportunity gaps.”Unlike at Morris, the new program offers free or reduced tuition, depending on family income, limited to enrolled members of Minnesota’s 11 federally recognized tribal nations. Students must also be first-year undergraduates or transfer students from tribal colleges.Eighteen of 146 Native freshmen received funding through the Native American Promise Tuition Program in fall 2022, according to reporting by the Star Tribune.
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