Considering GRIC’s Higher Education Scholarship and Its Impact (pt.1)

A 10 (ish) Year Reflection on Public GRIC Higher Education Data

Introduction

I was hoping that with this year’s 2025 data from the GRIN I would be able to do a 10-year reflection on GRIC’s higher education program, but unfortunately the GRIN was pretty sparse on any usable data this year. So, I suppose I’m doing an almost 10-year reflection on the Tribal Education Department’s Higher Education Scholarship!

I haven’t seen much public reporting or analysis on what GRIC’s Higher Education programs have accomplished or what barriers our students face. That’s why I’ve decided to write a short series on the subject. This first piece focuses on what the program is, what it’s achieved, and where we still have work to do.

The next article is going to be a summary of the data I’ve gathering from the Gila River Indian News about students who have been posted in the paper over the years. I’ll warn you that the data isn’t perfect, I’m going off a dataset that has changed a bunch of times over the past decade, but there is still a lot we can learn from it!

Then, finally I’ll be doing a personal reflection on my own educational and life journey and overlaying some of the lessons I’ve learned and struggles I faced and where some of the policy recommendations in this series come from. I don’t think I have a typical journey through school and through life, I don’t know what a typical journey would really mean for one of our Community members, but I think seeing a perspective might be helpful.

With all that said, lets roll…

What Is GRIC Student Services?

Let’s start with the basics. GRIC Student Services (often referred to as "TED-SS") is housed within the Tribal Education Department. Its main function is the Higher Education Scholarship, which provides financial assistance for GRIC-enrolled members attending accredited colleges, universities, or vocational programs.

The scholarship helps cover a student’s unmet financial need - the gap between what school costs and what other aid (like Pell Grants or loans) can cover. This includes support for:

• Tuition and fees

• Textbooks and required materials

• Room and board

• Transportation

• Personal living expenses

More information can be found at Gila River’s TED Page, but the summary is that the program is designed to remove financial barriers for students pursuing post-secondary education.

But Why?

I’ll be honest, I don’t know the full history behind the scholarship - in writing this I wish I had done a bit more homework behind that…

But what I know is that formal education has been important for our Community going back to our traditional chief Antonio Azul. Azul was part of bringing on the first educator in the Community - CH Cook.

Our tribal leadership at the time (late 1800’s) believed that education was the key to keeping our Community intact, that we needed to grow in knowledge to fight the next generation of battles to keep our Community alive.

These sentiments are echoed again and again through most of our leaders through history. Education is the key. So in the 90’s there was an effort to make education more affordable and accessible to Community members.

Is It Working?

In some ways, yes - undeniably so. Over the past 10 years,almost 600 students have been through and almost 650 degrees have been completed with help from the GRIC scholarship program.

These include associate degrees, bachelor’s, master’s degrees, and even doctorates. Students have gone into fields like social work, business administration, education, law, clinical psychology, and medicine.

Seen in that light, the scholarship has been a quiet but powerful force in building human capital for the Community. Despite occasional hiccups with payments or delays, the core work of getting GRIC members into and through college is working very well.

Even more critical, these members are not coming out the other side with crippling debt! By creating a program that covers most of the needs of students the TED-SS program is a marvelous success at helping higher education be more accessible to our people.

But here’s the catch: we don’t always feel the impact locally.

The Gaps: Why Aren’t They Coming Back?

While the scholarship program is helping students graduate, many still face major barriers to returning to the Community to live and work. These challenges fall into three main areas:

1. Housing

Affordable and accessible housing is one of the biggest barriers for returning graduates. Many who would like to move back might find it nearly impossible to build or buy a home within the Community. For those without access to local family housing, the only alternative is renting or buying a home outside GRIC lands. And anyone who has had to deal with that possibility lately knows that rental costs in surrounding cities like Chandler, Mesa, and Casa Grande have skyrocketed in recent years. Without housing security, returning home simply isn’t feasible for many.

2. Work Experience and Employment

The second barrier is employment. Here’s where things get complicated:

• TED policy discourages students from pursuing work-study, fellowships, or outside scholarships because those are counted toward the student’s financial aid package. That means students who hustle for extra support may receive less money from GRIC.

• Since only full-time students receive full scholarship benefits, many are forced to choose between going to school full time (with no time to work) or losing out on aid by going part-time.

• The result? Many graduates leave school with limited job experience even when they leave the school system with advanced degrees.

This creates a mismatch: students return home with valuable credentials but no practical experience, and GRIC departments often require years of experience for entry-level positions. Outside the Community, these graduates compete in saturated job markets. Inside, they’re often told to reapply once they’ve "gotten more experience."

3. Gaps in Workforce Alignment

Finally, an area I think makes coming home difficult is… well, what are we training and educating people for? Does it match the jobs we have locally? The ones we want to see?

We also need to ask: Are we aligning our scholarship investments with our workforce needs?

• How many graduates are in fields GRIC currently needs?

• Are we supporting programs that match the long-term priorities of the Community?

• Do returning students have clear pathways into tribal employment, or do they get lost in the shuffle?

There is no centralized feedback loop to measure whether our education pipeline is matching our workforce planning. And without that alignment, we risk training brilliant minds who look elsewhere.

Moving Forward: A Call for Action

If we want to bring our students home and keep them here, we are going to need more than just scholarships. We need a coordinated system that supports students from application to graduation to employment.

Here are a few ideas worth exploring:

• Housing Solutions: Prioritize housing programs for returning students, including rental assistance, transitional housing, or fast-tracked development options.

• Policy Updates: Adjust TED policy so that fellowships, work-study, and external scholarships add to a student’s support, not reduce it.

• Workforce Pipelines: Develop clear and easily accessible student internship, mentorship, and early employment pathways inside GRIC departments.

• Data Feedback Loops: Use graduate tracking to inform both scholarship awards and tribal workforce development planning. Likewise, use GRIC workforce development planning to start giving students an idea of what jobs are opening soon - what are positions we are funding, what skills are needed, where do we have large amounts of non-GRIC workforce?

• Community Mentorship: Pair graduates with current professionals or elders who can help them navigate higher education and return home. Especially for folks who did not grow up in the Community or are new to our homelands, it can be a major transition.

We’ve already invested in our students. Now it’s time to invest in the systems that welcome them back!

For this first section, I want to be clear that the program works. It works well, GRIC has supported hundreds of students and we have seen amazing success with the lives of our members. In the next article I’ll be looking more in-depth into the data!