Photo: An Rong Xu

A car dealership employee is hoping she can return to community college with a clean slate. A customer service representative is facing the bitter reality that she may never escape her decades-old debt.

Both are among the millions of people nationwide, many from low-income families, who borrowed money for college but did not receive a four-year degree. Will the Biden administration’s debt forgiveness plan get them to try again?

The high price of gas, food, and rent is straining students’ access to higher education. In response, institutions like Benedict College are using the infusion of one-time federal COVID relief dollars, grants, and philanthropy to ramp up offerings of free clothes, financial aid, and other necessities to keep lower-income students on track to earn degrees. 

But with that cash running out, it’s leaving some college leaders worried about how they’ll sustain many of the programs they’ve built to act as a lifeline for their students.

A new report from the four largest Native American scholarship organizations offers fresh insight on how Indigenous students are struggling to make ends meet while pursuing college and supporting their families and communities. 

To ensure Native American scholars can earn their degrees, the study says institutions must improve transparency about college costs, expand campus-based tuition and fee waivers, boost emergency aid, and purposefully gather data on their Indigenous students instead of grouping them into the catchall demographic of “other.”