American Indians Face Long Odds at College : Education: Only one in five at CSUN will graduate. Some researchers cite students’ fears of not being able to return home.

For American Indian students entering Cal State Northridge, prospects are poor: Chances are nearly 50-50 they will not return as sophomores, and only about one in five will graduate.

Among ethnic groups on campus, only blacks stand a worse chance of graduating, university statistics indicate.

Reasons for the high American Indian attrition are numerous. Some are cultural and some are financial. Although the college is given part of the blame, no one denies that similar problems exist at universities across the nation.

“I used to tell my mother going to college was like walking through fire,” said Lili Vidal, a CSUN graduate student of Cherokee descent. “It’s like a foreign country. How people organize and live their lives is very different. . . . Think about what it would be like if you looked around and never saw yourself reflected in the real world.”

Over a 10-year period beginning in 1978, just 22% of American Indian students at CSUN graduated, according to a retention study done by the college’s educational equity program. During those same years, only 15% of black students graduated, but the overall university average was 35%.

The numbers from CSUN, while unsettling for Indian education experts, are similar to those at many other campuses.

Although most of the largest national education organizations do not single out American Indians in studies because their numbers are so small, several smaller Indian education groups estimate national graduation rates range from 15% to 20%.

A study about Indian college dropouts published in 1985 by the UCLA Indian Studies Center and its former director, Prof. Charlotte Heth, a Cherokee, found significant differences between the perspectives of the educational institutions and of Indian groups on why students failed to graduate.

In a survey of 107 academic institutions and organizations, she found the top three reasons were lack of motivation, lack of long-range or career goals and a fear of not being able to return home after being educated, either because students’ families would not accept them or because they would no longer feel comfortable at home.

In an identical survey of 117 Indian groups and tribal representatives, Heth found the top reason listed was that same fear of not being able to return home, followed by housing problems and alcohol or drug abuse.

Charmaine Huntting, a UCLA law student who graduated from CSUN last spring, said she too worries that her education will drive a wedge between herself and her family and culture.

“I’m the first person in my family who has ever even graduated high school,” said Huntting, a Cherokee and Cruik who grew up in Los Angeles. “Even though I want to go into American Indian law, I tend to wonder whether they’ll see me as being educated in a white man’s world.”

Whether they have come from reservations or from urbanized families, Indians tend to follow tribal traditions of working in groups rather than alone, Indian scholars and activists said. Feelings of isolation and an aversion to competition are among the things that may cause them to drop out, they said.

“Our way of living and our way of thinking does not permit a sense of competition. Our experience is one of cooperation,” said Isaac Urquidi, a community social worker at the American Indian Counseling Center, run by the Los Angeles County Department of Mental Health. “We prefer to take a lower stand or a lower profile. That may lead people to think we are not intellectually capable of doing the work.”

At CSUN, other factors also are at work. American Indian students, former students, professors and past advisers said the strong cultural pull of family ties is one of the most common reasons students leave school. They said parents, many of whom have bad memories of their own attendance at federal Indian trade schools, may be less than enthusiastic about their offsprings’ college goals.

“There are times the students aren’t sure themselves about what they’re doing, which is not different from other students on campus. But the support network is entirely different,” said Nancy Peterson Walter, a former part-time anthropology instructor and adviser to the American Indian Student Assn. “Grandparents, parents and others say, ‘Why are you going to college anyway? You’re just an Indian. Come home.’ ”

Sister Grace Ann Rabideau, an Indian counselor at CSUN from 1972 to 1981 who now works at Valley College, said gaining a degree is so unimportant to some parents that students may quit just a class or two short of completion.

Bill Givens, a member of the Oklahoma-based Cruik tribe, did that in 1977, after getting a C-minus in a public administration class required for his major. But after a 14-year hiatus, most of it spent working as a driver’s training instructor, Givens, now 49, is back this fall, cramming for midterms.

“I just didn’t have the encouragement to do it before, and I didn’t have the funds,” he said.

Like Jewish students, Indian students find that their tribal calendars are out of sync with the university’s calendar, especially when a family member falls ill.

When Sheryll Ryan Safian’s father was diagnosed with leukemia in 1987, she said there was no question that she would travel to Oklahoma to participate in spring sun dances for him.

“In order for the healing ceremonies to work, the people closest have responsibility to help out,” Ryan Safian said. “I asked my father if he needed me and he said, ‘Yes, quit school, I need you back here.’ ”

Ryan Safian, a business major, had spent four years at CSUN. She plans to attend Valley College in the spring and then re-enroll at the university next fall.

At a CSUN protest last month, students also complained that American Indians had no gathering place of their own. The Indian student association lost its room in the anthropology department in 1984 to a museum. Students also say they need an American Indian adviser to double as mentor and father confessor for the Indian students.

Vicero said the museum has been closed and a new room for the association is drawn into the department’s renovation plans, scheduled for completion in January.

Because American Indian students tend to come from poor families, where the loss of a student’s potential income may be considered an unreasonable hardship, financial difficulties are particularly trying for some of the CSUN students, Peterson Walter said. Most of them work, and many take occasional semesters off to support their families and save up for school, sometimes never to return.

Even for those students who can prove tribal affiliation, who may have some access to student grants through the federal Bureau of Indian Affairs, the awards tend to be small and usually are contingent on attending school full time and finishing within four or five years, Heth said.

Junior Theresa Lucas, part Navajo and part Cherokee, considers herself luckier than most Indian students. She is on a leave of absence that she took to have her second baby, but she plans to return full time in the spring with the stability of her husband’s job, a scholarship from the National Institutes of Health and a built-in baby-sitter, her mother.

“I can understand why a lot of people don’t go back,” she said. “If I didn’t have my husband, I don’t know if I’d be able to continue.”

CSUN’s dropout situation may be no worse than the national picture, but administrators are concerned about it. They are developing plans for an American Indian studies department, which they hope will help them recruit more Indian students and encourage some of the 208 students attending classes there now to stay in school by providing them with an academic and social base.

Currently, only a minor is offered in the subject, with classes scattered among several disciplines.

The department proposal was endorsed last week by the School of Social and Behavioral Sciences, which would house the department. It now will be reviewed by the campus administration, which already has expressed interest in the idea.

“We feel that since we now have departments for the three other major minority groups, it would be appropriate to establish one for American Indians,” said Bob Suzuki, vice president of academic affairs.

An Asian-American studies department was founded earlier this year, while Pan-African studies and Chicano studies were formed in the early ‘70s, in the wake of community and campus civil rights protests.

American Indian students and other observers believe establishment of a department would be a good first step toward acknowledging their presence on campus. But they remain skeptical that the university will allocate resources necessary to make the program work. In the past, they said, advisers to the American Indian studies minor have been under-supported both financially and academically.

“The American Indian studies program and the American Indian students have been treated like a stepchild. . . . They give them a lot of lip service, but they never really treat them right,” said Suzanne Ankerstrom, a Chippewa who finished her undergraduate degree at CSUN in 1987, 13 years after she started there as a freshman. She is pursuing a master’s degree there while teaching high school.

The American Indian studies minor at CSUN has a checkered past, which critics say largely hinged on political whim. At its peak, following student protests in the late 1970s and early 1980s, it had an American Indian director, an office and an array of course offerings. There were more than 700 Indian students on campus then, said Dean Ralph Vicero of the School of Social and Behavioral Sciences. The director had close ties to American Indian recruiters in the educational equity office.

Now, an assistant dean in the School of Behavioral Sciences is temporarily overseeing the program, along with many other duties, Vicero said. Students say they have trouble completing the minor because required courses are offered so infrequently. For the past few years, there have been no ethnic Indian recruiters at the campus, Suzuki said, although one may be hired in the next few months.

WHY AMERICAN INDIANS DROP OUT Reasons given by colleges:

Lack of motivation

Lack of long-range or career goals

Fear of not being able to return home after being educated

Reasons given by Indian communities:

Fear of not being able to return home after being educated

Housing problems

Alcohol or drug abuse

Source: Issues for the Future of American Indian Studies, 1985, UCLA American Indian Studies Center

TRACKING ENROLLMENT

Tracking CSUN students enrolled as freshmen in 1978 (10-year study)

Left before Graduated 1985 by 1988 American Indians 75% 22% Blacks 84% 15% Latinos 66% 30% Whites 59% 40% Asians 54% 39% All students 62% 35%

Source: Cal State Northridge, Office of Educational Equity