Stanford will no longer host College Horizons’ summer program in 2027 as planned, according to an Oct. 30 email addressed to community members which was obtained by The Daily. The national non-profit works to expand college access for Native American, Alaska Native and Native Hawaiian high school students.

College Horizons’ summer program was most recently held at Stanford in 2007 and 2015, according to an Instagram post listing venues that have hosted College Horizons since 1998. Different universities, including Harvard, Yale and the University of California, Berkeley, rotate hosting the program each year. The organization is entering its 30th year with more than 4,900 alumni. 

Its remote program will continue on June 14-18 as scheduled, and one in-person program will be hosted at Colorado College on July 18-23, as planned. For the organization’s second in-person program, it has not yet named the new host college, with dates planned for June or July 2027. 

The University discussed ways to support hosting the program with College Horizons, however, the two parties were unable to reach an agreement on the terms, according to university spokesperson Angie Davis.

“We appreciate the incredible work that College Horizons does to expand opportunities for Native students and hope that there will be opportunities to welcome the program back to campus in the future,” Davis wrote in an email to The Daily.

Neither College Horizons’ email to community members nor the University’s statement provided details on the specific terms of the agreement that were unmet. 

Pauli’i Ann Zidek ’27 is an alumni of the College Horizons summer program and interned for its Dartmouth program in summer 2026. She shared the impact the program had on her journey to Stanford.

“I genuinely, wholeheartedly believe I would not be at Stanford without it,” she said.

Zidek said she had not been considering applying to Stanford, but her College Horizons mentor encouraged her to think about it and told her about the Native community on campus, including the Native American Cultural Center and the Stanford American Indian Organization.

“That actually made me want to come here, and then it became the only school I actually applied to,” she said.

Zidek shared she knows at least 32 current Stanford students who took part in College Horizons, which she described as “a good chunk of all Native students at Stanford.” According to Zidek, members of the Native American Cultural Center and Stanford’s Native community received no specific reasoning from the University for the decision.

“There was a top down directive from the University that they were canceling the program, but they never said why,” she said.

In the email to the College Horizons community, the organization attributed the political climate as the reason some colleges can no longer support the program, although it did not name Stanford specifically. 

In the same email, College Horizons explained the organization is dealing with the effects of the Supreme Court’s 2023 ruling on race in college admissions, the dismantling of the Department of Education and the political climate in education.

 
“As a result, some colleges are no longer able to fully support College Horizons’ mission, programs and the students we choose to serve in a manner consistent with our hosting expectations,” the email stated.

Zidek said students who had encouraged their younger siblings to attend the Stanford program felt blindsided by the news that it would no longer be hosted by the University.

“I see this as a part of Stanford’s larger journey of taking concerning action within the Native Community, like removing the Land Acknowledgement and continually low Native enrollment,” she said. 

Zidek said the University did not offer an adequate explanation for why the nonprofit’s program was cancelled. She speculated that it may be because Stanford is concerned about the Supreme Court or the Trump administration, and that the University should communicate if that’s the case.

“Have a backbone, stand for something, and if you want to stand for the Trump administration, then stand for the Trump administration,” she said.