Tribal Colleges Still Struggle to Provide Internet Access

An article in Diverse: Issues in Higher Education covers the digital divide and its effects on tribal colleges.

While mainstream colleges pour millions into technology, “tribal colleges are finding myriad hurdles — financial, technological, geographical and cultural — in their quests to become technologically relevant and thus appealing to increasingly tech-smart, if not savvy, students,” reports Reginald Stuart.

The article offers a picture of how some tribal colleges continue to struggle with providing access to computers and the Internet. Sometimes the problem is made more difficult by the architecture of the colleges — a college in Kansas, for example, was built with sturdy, cheap cinderblock that inhibits wireless signals. More often, the challenge is simply economic: Some tribal colleges are serving people who still do not have electricity or running water, much less cable modems. —Scott Carlson