While Congress continues mulling over President Donald Trump’s fiscal agenda, part of the White House budget proposes to essentially defund tribal colleges and universities, known as TCUs — slashing federal funding by nearly 90% — for three schools across Arizona and dozens more throughout Indian Country.
‘A college with no funding, no classrooms, no faculty’
Among them is emerging San Carlos Apache College, which is not your typical campus.
The tribe has been building toward this dream of making higher education more accessible on the reservation for the last decade-plus. That vision came from San Carlos Apache Chairman Terry Rambler.
It’s still a work in progress, but one he’s been personally contributing to — both in big and small ways — including the budding institution’s first commencement back in May 2020.
“So we asked the chairman if we can borrow his podium,” recalled Lisa Eutsey, vice president San Carlos Apache College. “We didn’t know he had more than one, and so the next year, I had texted him or something and I was like, ‘Hey, can we borrow your podium again?’ But then I realized we found it, and he was like, ‘Just keep it.’”
That’s been a theme for the chairman, when it comes to piecemealing this makeshift campus together in the heart of San Carlos by slowly turning empty tribally owned buildings — including one home to old council chambers — into classrooms.
“Actually, a lot of the artwork on the walls are things that the chairman donated,” added Eutsey, who also serves as provost. “He has a surplus and is always like, ‘Come on over, I have some things for the college.’”
The tribe’s generosity has helped the fledgling college grow into what it is today — now offering seven associate degrees and three certificates and serving mainly a mix of San Carlos and White Mountain Apaches though some non-Natives attend as well.
Chartered in 2014, then officially opening its doors three years later, San Carlos Apache College has graduated more than 100 students and counting.
“I joke I was leaving, in a way, the most fully funded, built-out, oldest tribal college,” said Eutsey, who used to be dean of faculty for Diné College — founded on the Navajo Nation in 1968, “to come to a college with no funding, no classrooms, no faculty. When I joined the college, I was one of two people.”
‘This is threatening to close their doors’
By this fall, Eutsey expects the college to employ eight full-time teachers and is aiming to enroll about 500 students, but they and another 36 Indigenous schools across more than a dozen states are still dreading the worst.
They’re facing crippling cuts, with Trump wanting to drop their federal funding by almost 90% — down to a collective $22 million — compared to the last fiscal year.
“Without doubt, this is threatening to close their doors,” said Ahniwake Rose, president and CEO of the nonprofit American Indian Higher Education Consortium. “The budget that we saw was deeply, deeply troubling. No one has told us exactly why.”
Rose emphasized these tribally chartered schools — considered lifelines for language, culture and traditional knowledge instruction – fundamentally differ from their public and private college peers like Harvard or Yale, lacking large endowments, wealthy donors and high tuition rates.
This all means opportunities for raising revenue are incredibly limited.
“Our TCUs are not blessed with the same wealth structure to develop endowments,” added Rose, who is Cherokee. “While we definitely have wonderful, skilled alumni, they are not folks that are able to give millions and millions of dollars.”
For context, the consortium states that the average tuition at TCUs is roughly $3,500 annually, but many post-secondary institutions offer free tuition for enrolled tribal members.
Rose described them as “extensions of the tribal communities in which we serve, and TCUs are a direct expression of sovereignty over our education systems,” adding “ours is one step further, and that it’s grounded in who we are – steeped in Native ways of knowing.”
Aside from the 22,000 students TCUs serve in any given year, Rose explained they also indirectly educate another 100,000 community members through programming as 1994 Land Grant Institutions.
“A lot of natural resources classes,” she said. “Agriculture, farming, livestock, essentially developing community resources with the members that live in our land base. We are definitely majorly Native-serving, we’re also open institutions.”
Meaning, they’re often among the few — if only — opportunities for not only tribal members but non-Native residents in rural and remote areas to pursue higher education.
‘We’ve seen it all, but we’ve always been resilient’
Tribal colleges and universities heavily depend on three federal agencies to stay financially afloat: the U.S. Department of Agriculture, Department of Education and Interior Department.
“If you take away any one of those legs, that stool will fall. We actually saw flat funding at both the Department of Education and USDA,” Rose elaborated. “Ironically, the agency that’s really in charge of the trust responsibilities to Indian people is the one that zeroed out funding.”
In a statement, the Bureau of Indian Education told KJZZ it “remains committed to providing high-quality education that honors the unique needs and cultures of Native students,” adding it “will continue to advance academic excellence, student well-being, and culturally relevant instruction with the resources entrusted to us.”
The White House did not respond to KJZZ’s requests when asked to explain why.
But Scott Davis, senior advisor to Interior Secretary Doug Burgum, testified during a joint congressional oversight hearing last week that these huge cuts are “nothing new.”
“We’ve been through the ebbs and flows of funding with Congress for a long time,” said Davis, who is Standing Rock Sioux. “We’ve seen cuts. We’ve seen increases. We’ve seen it all, but we’ve always been resilient.”
The son of a late tribal college president — Jim Davis of Turtle Mountain College in North Dakota — and an alum of Haskell Indian Nations University in Kansas, Davis didn’t deny the proposed cuts will have “direct impacts.”
“I’m certain of that,” he added. “So I think this is a perfect time right now to reset that button of what this really looks like for the future of education across Indian Country, I really do.”
‘Some will die quickly and others will die slowly’
“To propose a 90% cut is a death sentence,” said Tohono O’odham Community College President Stephen Schoonmaker, who just celebrated his first full year. “Some tribal colleges will die quickly and others will die slowly, but we cannot sustain without the obligated funds that should be coming and have come for a long time.”
Better known as TOCC, Tohono O’odham Community College is based in Sells but has four campuses statewide, including one in Phoenix. This May’s commencement marked their largest class to date — more than 100 graduates — from a total population of nearly 1,200 students.
The college has big plans: from developing its first four-year degree in Tohono O’odham studies — a diploma meant for those who desire to work one day for the tribal government — to helping revitalize an endangered language lost, in part, by generations of federal Indian boarding schools.
Now that’s all in jeopardy.
Schoonmaker shared that more than half of its operational funding comes from the Bureau of Indian Education – while the Tohono O’odham Nation contributes over a third, sitting at 36%. While tribes can charter their own colleges and universities, not all of them allocate their own funding, citing federal treaty and trust obligations.
Either way, Schoonmaker insisted the U.S. should be funding them because it’s “a good return on investment, not something that is wasteful, and more importantly, not discretionary.”
He fears funding shortfalls could have cascading effects, like losing their accreditation, which took years to achieve – credentials that San Carlos Apache College also relies on until it eventually earns its own.
“Our accreditor is going to say, ‘Are you fiscally stable?’” said Schoonmaker. “And if you aren’t, they’re just going to look at that as a red flag.”
Looming cuts could discourage student interest, with Schoonmaker saying the mere threat hurts enrollment: “Why would a student say, ‘I’m going to go to Tohono O’odham Community College’ when they may lose 90% of a major funding source?”
‘They’ve never given us a reason’
“Slashing their funding would set back generations of progress — not just for Native students working toward a degree, but for the future of tribal nations,” Sen. Mark Kelly told KJZZ in a statement, while Sen. Ruben Gallego added that cutting funding “would be a serious mistake,” emphasizing “now is the time to invest more, not less.”
“Fully funding education, especially our TCUs, shouldn’t be optional budget items,” said Democratic Rep. Yassamin Ansari in a statment to KJZZ with her chamber colleague Rep. Greg Stanton stressing the federal government has a trust responsibility which “includes providing the resources necessary to meet educational needs.”
The rest of Arizona’s delegation — all House Republicans — did not respond to requests from KJZZ when asked to weigh in on Trump’s proposal, including Reps. Andy Biggs, David Schweikert, Eli Crane, Juan Ciscomani, Abraham Hamadeh and Paul Gosar.
Meanwhile, neighboring New Mexico’s congressional delegation is a united front in defending the Institute of American Indian Arts in Santa Fe — now bracing for the Trump administration to do away with its $13 million annual appropriation.
Unlike TCUs, Haskell Indian Nations University, the Southwestern Polytechnic Institute (SIPI) in Albuquerque and Institute of American Indian Arts are all federally chartered — meaning, the U.S. government oversees and operates them.
“They’ve never given us a reason, didn’t expect this one though,” said Robert Martin, outgoing president of IAIA. “They just said we’re eliminating funding for the Institute of American Indian Arts. No other explanation whatsoever.”
Martin, who is Cherokee, never imagined his summer being bogged down by grave budget talks before retiring later this month after a four-decade career in tribal higher education that included stints as president of SIPI, Haskell and TOCC.
A former associate head of American Indian studies at the University of Arizona, he also helped TOCC secure its own accreditation two decades ago after Pima Community College agreed to sponsor them. Now TOCC is paying that forward that by aiding San Carlos Apache College while readying to become a candidate.
Martin insists tribes retain a right to educational sovereignty, arguing the U.S. has a “legal and moral obligation to fulfill the treaties that were signed years ago with no end date.” Now it’s up to lawmakers in D.C. to decide the fate of this prestigious arts school in the Southwest.
“In our name, it has Indian and arts,” said Martin, “and both of those, I don’t think, are considered to be very important to this current administration.”
EDITOR'S NOTE: This story has been updated to correct the spelling of Robert Martin's name.
