Starting July 1, a new population of prospective students will be eligible for American Indian tuition waivers in Montana — a shift that could make college more affordable for thousands of people and affect campus budgets. The change is also receiving mixed reactions from tribal leaders.
The American Indian tuition waiver is a decades-old program within the Montana University System that encourages eligible Native American students to pursue higher education by covering tuition costs. About 800 Native students receive the funding annually, which costs the state about $3.8 million, according to the Office of the Commissioner of Higher Education (OCHE).
Before the upcoming change, students had to be a member of a federally recognized tribe in Montana or document at least one-quarter “Indian blood,” demonstrate financial need, and be a resident of the state to be eligible for the waiver.
Feeling pressure from a January 2025 executive order issued by President Donald Trump that called on institutions to “end illegal (Diversity, Equity and Inclusion) discrimination and preferences,” the Board of Regents, which governs the Montana University System, in July 2025 approved two changes to the waiver: removing the blood quantum requirement, and expanding the tribal enrollment requirement to include unenrolled tribal “descendants.”
Under the new criteria, students must still demonstrate financial need and Montana residency.
Blood quantum, a concept rooted in assimilation tactics, refers to the fractional amount of tribal affiliation in an individual’s ancestry. Most tribes nationwide use blood quantum to determine eligibility for tribal citizenship. Many experts say tribes will soon have to change blood quantum as a membership criteria if they are to survive as political entities. A tribe cannot exist without members, and as tribal members marry outside of their tribe and have children with decreasing proportions of legal tribal identity through the generations, tribes lose population.
“Descendant” typically refers to someone related to an enrolled tribal member. Some tribes define a descendant as someone whose parent or grandparent is enrolled; other tribes say a descendant is anyone who can trace a relationship to an original list of enrolled members.
Angela McLean, director of American Indian and minority achievement at OCHE, the administrative arm of the Board of Regents, said her office believes the changes “are going to expand eligibility opportunities for students.”
She wrote in an email to MTFP that educational institutions will not receive additional state funding to account for the changes and will have to cover any additional costs of the expanded waiver through “reallocation of other portions of campus budgets.”
McLean said OCHE has been communicating with financial aid officers across university system campuses about the changes “to make sure that they accept a broad spectrum of documentation” related to descendant status. Tribes, she said, can determine for themselves what kind of documentation, if any, they provide to descendants.
Students who are participating in the waiver program before the changes go into effect, McLean said, will continue to receive the waiver through the completion of their current degree.
A TENSE MEETING
At a December 2025 meeting of the Legislature’s State Tribal Relations Interim Committee, Galen Hollenbaugh, OCHE’s deputy commissioner for government relations and communications, told lawmakers the Board of Regents adopted the changes last July in reaction to Trump’s executive order.
In January 2025, Trump signed an executive order “ending illegal discrimination and restoring merit-based opportunity.”
The order alleges that institutions including higher education “use dangerous, demeaning, and immoral race- and sex-based preferences under the guise of so-called ‘diversity, equity, and inclusion’ (DEI) or ‘diversity, equity, inclusion, and accessibility’ (DEIA) that can violate the civil-rights laws of this Nation.” It ordered institutions to end such preferences and said the Secretary of Education would issue guidance to institutions of higher education that receive federal funds regarding “practices required to comply.”
Hollenbaugh said that order was followed by a February “Dear Colleague” letter from the U.S. Department of Education’s Office for Civil Rights, signaling that the department would “take appropriate measures to assess compliance.”
The letter said schools “have routinely used race as a factor in admissions, financial aid, hiring, training, and other institutional programming,” and warned that “discrimination on the basis of race, color, or national origin is, has been, and will continue to be illegal.”
“Institutions that fail to comply with federal civil rights law may, consistent with applicable law, face potential loss of federal funding,” the letter said.
Hollenbaugh told the Tribal Relations Interim Committee in December that Trump’s executive order and the administration’s compliance letter “brought about some concern when we were looking at the blood quantum requirement within the (American Indian tuition) waiver.”
“We were very concerned about that being the racially discriminatory possibility that might put the waiver in jeopardy,” he told lawmakers.
That concern, some tribal leaders now say, is the basis of their objection to what otherwise might seem a welcome benefit to tribal constituents in Montana. It’s well established in federal Indian law that tribal citizenship is a political classification, not a racial one.
In July, the Board of Regents removed the blood quantum requirement and expanded the tribal enrollment requirement to include descendants. (In August, a U.S. District Judge in Maryland found the U.S. Education Department broke the law when it threatened to withhold federal funds from educational institutions that incorporated DEI initiatives.)
State Sen. Jonathan Windy Boy, D-Box Elder, who in 2023 brought a bill that would have enacted similar changes to the tuition waiver program, asked Hollenbaugh whether the Board of Regents had consulted with tribes before enacting the change.
“Whenever there is major policy that affects tribes, the tribes need to know ahead of time,” he said at the December committee meeting. “If that was not the case in this, then I’ve got issues with that.”
Hollenbaugh repeatedly told members of the State Tribal Relations Committee in December that the intention of the change is to “ensure the long-term stability of the waiver.” “The need for speed,” he said of legal concerns regarding Trump’s executive order, “was pretty imminent.”
Rep. Tyson Running Wolf, D-Browning, who chairs the State Tribal Relations Committee, told Hollenbaugh he had drafted a bill during the 2025 legislative session that would have enacted similar changes to the tuition waiver program, but ultimately withdrew it because he became concerned about its implications and decided “it could be real controversial” within tribal communities.
A fiscal analysis of Running Wolf’s bill estimated that if descendants of Montana tribes had been eligible for the waiver in fall of 2024, the waiver would cover tuition for about 1,373 new students. The analysis estimated the changes would cost the state $5.5 million in 2027, $5.7 million in 2028, and almost $6 million in 2029, accounting for population growth.
Running Wolf told MTFP this week he has “mixed feelings” about the changes the Board of Regents enacted. While he hopes the modified criteria will expand access to education for Native students, he wishes the tribes had been consulted ahead of time.
“I’m not saying I have the answer,” he said. “I don’t know what the final verdict was going to be after consulting with tribes and university students about what they felt they needed. We never got there. We were never able to get there.”
Running Wolf also said that because federal Indian law defines Native Americans as members of a political — not a racial — class, there was no need for the Board of Regents to enact changes in response to Trump’s executive order aimed at “discrimination based on race.”
“It would not have been under threat at all,” he said of the original tuition waiver program. “There was no rush.”
Asked about the lack of tribal consultation, McLean wrote in an email to MTFP that OCHE “has reached out to each of the tribal governments, and we will continue those outreach efforts across the state.”
HOPE FOR EXPANDED ACCESS
James Broscheit, director of Montana State University’s Office of Financial Aid Services, said that while it’s early in the admissions cycle to be getting inquiries about financial aid, he’s already received questions from several students about the new eligibility requirements. He said the previous blood quantum requirements had been challenging for some students to meet, particularly if they didn’t know how to find documentation.
“Ideally, this creates a little bit of an easier path for students,” he said of the change.
Miranda Burland, scholarship officer for the Confederated Salish and Kootenai Tribes, said she’s excited for students who will be newly eligible for the waiver.
“I think when students know there’s more opportunities for funding, it’s almost like you can see a little relief,” she said. “Their shoulders come down a little bit. It’s not such a high anxiety for them. Financially, it opens the door for so many people.”
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This story was originally published by Montana Free Press and distributed through a partnership with The Associated Press.
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