An internal audit that was quietly released this week in Ottawa says the Canadian government isn’t doing a good enough job of keeping track of the nearly $300-million program that’s supposed to help aboriginal students go to college, and that the number of aboriginal students getting money is actually 4,000 less than a decade ago.

Those findings come despite the government’s having declared higher education a priority in its efforts to close the poverty gap between aboriginal people and other Canadians, the Canadian Press reported. The country’s three officially recognized aboriginal peoples, who make up 4 percent of the population, are the First Nations (North American Indians), the métis, and the Inuit. The Assembly of First Nations, an advocacy organization, estimates that 10,000 qualified First Nations students want to attend college but are on waiting lists for lack of financial aid.

The audit says that there are discrepancies in the amounts of money available to students in different parts of the country and that the postsecondary program is hampered by lax reporting, growing education costs, and a haphazard system of disbursing support. “It is important that clear and appropriate performance measures, results indicators, and targets be developed,” the audit says.

In recent years, Canadian universities and colleges have increased efforts to recruit and retain aboriginal students. In 2007 an independent research group, the Centre for the Study of Living Standards, stated that Canada would be the loser if it didn’t increase the number of aboriginal students in higher education. —Karen Birchard