This article was written by Katherine Mangan of the Chronicle of Higher Education.
This article is a guest essay written in the New York Times by Max Kenner, founder and executive director of the Bard Prison Initiative at Bard College. Mr. Kenner argues that the FAFSA Simplification Act "has the potential to do more good within U.S. prisons than any policy in a generation." But, he continues, the work has just begun.
This article from USA Today discusses the expansion of Pell Grants, which were eliminated in the Violent Crime Control and Law Enforcement Act of 1994 for incarcerated people and ended the majority of prison education programs.
This report synthesizes existing…
This fact sheet from the U.S. Department of Education's Federal Student Aid office…
This fact sheet from the U.S. Department of Education's Federal Student Aid office provides answers to common questions from incarcerated students seeking financial aid.
I am so proud of the men at Maine State Prison for completing and sustaining this computer technology program! This is exactly the type of programming and equality that prison education needs to normalize to offer incarcerated students tech savvy, marketable skills and to give equity to tech spaces for incarcerated people.
The Educational Justice Institute and RAISE at MIT have been faithfully offering web design, computer programming, and app invention classes for years, not only in Maine, but to mixed cohorts in facilities from various states.
In addition to the MIT App…
The Second Chance Pell Experimental Sites Initiative, launched in 2015, has already impacted the landscape of prison higher education by increasing the number of colleges and universities providing in-prison postsecondary education. This research brief draws upon three years of data collection through a national mixed-methods project, Exploring the Experiences of Participants in Second Chance Pell. Here, we include data collected from the staff at four higher education institutions in financial aid, admissions, and the registrar or related unit. The larger study focused on nine…
Launched in 2015, the Second Chance Pell Experiment allowed a select number of institutions of higher education to provide Pell Grants to incarcerated students. Seven years later, and on the cusp of Pell expansion, there are a few noteworthy impacts of the federal experiment:
» As of 2022, up to 200 institutions of higher education can participate in the federal experiment.
» Over 28,000 unduplicated students enrolled in postsecondary education through the Second Chance Pell Experiment from 2016 through 2021.
» Across the pilot’s first 2 years, institutions awarded approximately $…
