Ruey-Lin Lin, Deborah LaCounte, and Jeanne Eder

By using data collected (May, 1986; sample size: 616) at a mid-size (student population: 4000) and predominantly White (95%) college, this study examines the effect of school environment on academic performance and graduation expectation of Indian students. School environnment was conceptualized to consist of the non-academic variables that are "present" and "experienced" by students while in college. Among the ten variables that were selected for study, factor analysis reduces the variables to four factors: attitude toward college education, attitude toward professors, the perception of campus hostility, and the feeling of isolation. Findings from regression analyses indicate that among Indian students the factors of over-all attitude toward college education and the feeling of isolation account for more than 17% of the variance in academic performance as measured by GPA. The same two factors further account for 23% of the variance for expectation for graduation from the college. In contrast, among White students, attitude toward professors, attitude toward college education, and the feeling of isolation account for only a little over 9% of the variance in GPA; and the factors of over-all attitude toward college education and the feeling of isolation account for close to 23% of the variance in graduation expectation. The environmental factors thus explain twice as much variance in GPA among Indian students than among White students while explaining about the same amount of variance in graduation expectation among the two student bodies. A further analysis of the correlation matrices seems to indicate that the perception of campus hostility and the feeling of isolation in a predominantly White college contribute significantly, though indirectly, to the problem of the academic performance of Indian students.

As a whole, American Indians have achieved the lowest educational levels among all racial minorities. Within a four-year period, 6% of American Indian students completed college degrees, while 7% of Chicanos and Puerto Ricans and 12% of Black and 23% of White students completed degrees (Astin, 1982). Serious efforts have been made to uncover factors contributing to poor academic performance of the American Indian students. Findings generally indicate that the primary problem of low educational achievement rests on poor high school preparation, financial problems, poor study habits and other "individually" based factors (Guyette & Heth, 1983; Sandoval, 1978; Scott, 1986).

In yet another approach, some researchers have focused their attention on discovering the secret of success of those few who persist and are doing well and are successfully completing their schooling. In a recent study at Minnesota Chippewa Tribal College, Aitken and Falk (1983) have identified four major factors which contributed to students’ remaining through graduation: personal motivation, adequate parental and financial support, positive faculty responsiveness, and support of friends. In his Wisconsin study, Wilson also had very similar findings: financial aid ranked first as a factor contributing to college completion, followed by family support, having a personal goal, determination, and intelligence (Wilson, 1983).

Regardless of the focus on either the success or failure of the American Indian students, the factors explored seem to have difficulty to explain the phenomenon that the academic performance of the American Indian students "deteriorate" over the years from grade school to college. In a recent statewide survey of Indian education in the State of Washington, it was found that "a downward trend in reading and mathematics achievement scores, which fell from above average in grade 1 to well below average in grade 12, with a large drop after grade 9" (Washington Office of the State Superintendent of Public Instruction, Olympia, 1984). In yet another study analyzing the long-term performance of minority and nonminority students, Wilson found that after four years at a large university, "minority and nonminority students were more sharply separated by the cumulative GPA based on all work completed over the undergraduate careers than they were by the GPA reflecting work completed during the first semester or first year" (Wilson, 1984:369). From this perspective, if the problem of low academic performance is primarily a matter of individual "motivation," the question remains to be asked as to why American Indian students gradually lose their "motivation" to achieve such that their severe drop in performance at the ninth grade level results in poor or inadequate high school preparation for college and they continue to lose motivation during their college years? In addition, if the problem were to be rooted in the "difficult situation" that Indian students confront on the campus which prohibit them from "integration into the university community" (Scott, 1986), the existence of the difficult situation probably is more than the student’s "attachment to Indian culture."

The study of the American Indian student’s academic performance seems to be in need of a broader theoretical perspective than that of the individual motivation adopted. Researchers in the field have long pointed out the importance of the influence of school environment on academic success. Peterson and Rodriguez pointed out that minority students perceived university and community activities in a predominantly White campus as directed toward White students. As a result, it created the feelings of anger, frustration, and helplessness among minority students. These students may respond to the stress by leaving the university (Peterson & Rodriguez, 1978). In a study of alienation and attrition of Black college students on a predominantly White campus, Suen found that while attrition was not directly related to alienation scores among White students, it was for the Black students. Furthermore, the most important contributor to total score difference in alienation was Black students’ significantly higher level of social estrangement (feeling of loneliness). Furthermore, for both Black and White students, attrition was inversely related to GPA (Suen, 1983).

As a member of the minority groups, American Indian students are as much, if not more, alienated from the college campus as the Black. Therefore, the effect of alienation on Black students’ attrition and performance must in some way also have taken its toll on American Indian students. It is from this approach that this study attempts to expand our investigation into the factors that contribute to the poor academic performance of American Indian students.

In Spring quarter of 1986, a cooperative effort was made by Eder, LaCounte, and Lin to collect data from students in a predominantly white mid-size (approximately 4,000) four-year State college in Montana. The purpose was to compare and contrast American Indian and White students with regard to factors that affect academic performance. In the process of developing a questionnaire for the study, we very much followed the conventional "motivational" approach with some minor modifications. The survey was administered to regular classes. In an effort to increase the representation of American Indian students in the survey, questionnaires were handed out at the Indian Career Service Center where a sealed questionnaire return box was also placed.

Of the 632 students surveyed, 255 (40.3%) were male and 370 (58.5%) female, a distribution close to the actual sex ratio of the College (4 to 6). Because of our deliberate attempt to increase representation from the Indian student sector, 13.8% (87) of the sample were Indian students (in contrast to their 5% in the campus population), 80.4% (508) were White, 3.3% (21) other minorities, and 2.5% (16) did not declare their racial background. Among the 87 Indian students, 31 (35.6%) were male and 56 (64.4%) female. In terms of academic status, 40.2% (35) of the Indian sample consisted of freshmen, 17.2% (15) sophomores, 16.1% (14) juniors, 21.8% (19) seniors, and graduate students 4.6% (4). Furthermore, 20.7% (18) of the Indian students were under 21 years of age; 47.1% (41) between 21 and 30; 24.1% (21) between 31 and 40; and 8% (7) of the students between 41 and 50 years of age. This sample distribution does not deviate significantly from that of the general Indian student population of the College.

In order to investigate the effect of school environment on academic performance, ten Likert-type questions relating to the student’s perception of college environment were selected from the questionnaire. Using principal component analysis and varimax rotation, factor analysis on SPSSx reduced the questions to four factors. The factor that loads significantly on every variable and therefore is the most general and the most important factor is the feeling of hostility against them (Indian) on campus. The second most important factor is the attitude toward college, followed by attitude toward professor and the feeling of isolation. Table 1 reports factor loading for each variable.

TABLE 1
Rotated Factor Loading

In order to compare and contrast Indian and White students regarding their perception of the college environment as well as grade point average (GPA) and the perception of the probability of getting a college degree, T-test was run. As can be seen from the report on Table 2, a statistically significant difference exists between the two groups of students on GPA, the perceived campus hostility, attitude toward college education, and the feeling of isolation. It is important to point out that while Indian students’ GPA is lower (mean score of 5.08 vs. 5.92 for the White), their attitude toward college is more positive than that of White students (12.66 vs. 12.23). The hostility they feel against them and the sense of isolation are much more pronounced for Indian students than White (5.62 vs. 3.76 and 4.82 vs. 3.94, respectively). No statistically significant difference was found between the two groups in their perception of the probability of getting a college degree and the attitude toward professors.

Table 3 shows the correlation coefficients for both Indian and White students. For both groups of students, attitude toward college seems to be the key variable which correlates with most other variables. Most importantly, the correlation coefficients indicate that for Indian students the relationship between the feeling of isolation and the perceived hostility (.33) and between the feeling of isolation and GPA (-.29) are much stronger than for White students (.13 and -.13, respectively).

Table 2
T Test

TABLE 3
Correlation Coefficients
(Upper half: Indian/Lower half: White)

Significance LE .05 Significance LE .01 Significance LE .001

In order to get a sense of the explanatory power of the environmental factors on academic performance (GPA) and expectation (getting degree), separate regression analyses were run for both Indian and White students. Table 4 and 5 reports the regression coefficients for the run. For the Indian student, Beta indicates that the feeling of isolation has the most effect on GPA (-.27) and the attitude toward college the second (.26). Altogether the four school environment factors account for 19% of the variance in GPA. In contrast, attitude toward professor has the most effect on White student (.23), followed by attitude toward college(.10), and the four factors accounts for less than 10% of the variance on GPA. In terms of factors affecting the expectation of getting a college degree, for both Indian and White alike, attitude toward college has the most influence (beta .43 for both). While the feeling of isolation has a negative effect on Whites (beta -.12), the effect is nearly double (-.23) on Indians. Altogether, the factors account for about 25% of variance in the expectation of getting a college degree for Indians and about 23% for Whites.

TABLE 4
Regression (Indian)

TABLE 5
Regression (White)

In summary, while their GPA is lower, American Indian students’ attitude toward their professors as well as their perception of college education are equally, if not more, positive than that of White students. What differentiates them from their White counterpart seems to rest, most importantly and directly, on the destructive effect of the feeling of isolation. This feeling of isolation, in turn, is related to the feeling that the White campus is hostile towards them.

Conventional approach toward the problem of poor academic performance among Indian students has focused primarily on factors relating to individual psychology. By shifting the focus to environmental factors and using a comparative approach between Indian and White students, this study has uncovered a number of interesting findings and neglected problems:

1. Under the hostile environment in general, and hostility against them by their professors in particular (40% of Indian students felt at least some degree of hostility from their professors while only 15% of White students felt so), and the feeling that they have been isolated, our Indian students, are, nevertheless, respectful of their professors. This attitude of respect might be a reflection of their traditional upbringing rather than genuinely deserved. It is imperative that faculty in institutions with Indian students become aware of the unspoken hostility felt by Indian students.

2. The finding that even under such an adverse environment, the attitude and perception of Indian students toward college education remains more positive than that of White students is an indication of the awareness on the part of our Indian students of the importance of college education for their future. Furthermore, compared with White students, their equally favorable perception of the probability of getting a college degree reflects their "overall" and "general" optimistic perception of the college environment. From this perspective, the problem of their poor academic performance must be rooted in the "concrete" difficulty experienced within the contextual situation of a college campus. In his comparative study of the long-term performance of minority and non-minority students, Wilson found that minority students’ GPA fluctuates from one semester to another much more than non-minority (Wilson, 1981:368). The reason behind the lower correlation between adjacent semester GPA values for minorities might be the reality that any individual member of a minority must confront on a particular campus. Since an individual’s experience changes from one semester to another depending on the courses, his/her GPA is likely to fluctuate depending on the "hostility" "concretely" encountered and sense of "isolation" "concretely" experienced.

To attribute the problem of poor academic performance to "poor motivational factor" or "difficult situation" is like blaming the victim of rape for being a woman. While it might be true that American Indian students confront a "difficult situation" on a predominantly White campus, the question to ask, then, is "who created the ‘difficult situation?’" It is obvious from our study that Indian students did not create the ‘difficult situation’ on campus—for they are the victims of being isolated and explicitly or implicitly targeted for hostility. In a study of elements that contribute to success of university Indian students, Osborne and Cranney discovered that high administrative support, specialized faculty, closely monitored courses, and an academic advisement office were among the most important elements (Osborne & Cranney, 1985). This finding makes it obvious that improvement on the campus environment relates directly to improvement in the academic performance of the Indian student. We hope the study reported here expands our attention on the problem of Indian academic performance to a broader perspective.

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