The Field of Higher Education in Prison

This news article from Open Campus discusses the compounding issues of technology troubles inside prisons. When prison tech stops working, those inside are left with limited recourse.

This news article from Open Campus discusses the impact of prison closures on incarcerated students. 

As California closes three more prisons and downsizes six others, some prisoners aren’t ready to go. They are worried about the future of their education. California Governor Gavin Newsom is closing and downsizing prisons across the state, putting the future of over a thousand incarcerated students at risk. College administrators say they have few resources to help.

This news article from Open Campus takes us inside a prison education program in the Mississippi Department of Corrections.

In this news article from Open Campus, four formerly incarcerated people share their experiences with Pell Grants prior to 1994—when Congress eliminated access to federal financial aid for incarcerated students. Their stories have been edited for length and clarity.

This resource from Jobs for the Future (JFF) can help postsecondary institutions capitalize on existing national data sources to obtain information on prison education programs and students.

In this resource, overviews for the following data sources are provided:

• Integrated Postsecondary Education Data System (IPEDS)
• Federal Student Aid (FSA) data
• Program for the International Assessment of Adult Competencies (PIAAC) Survey of Incarcerated Adults
• Education Justice Tracker (EJT)
• National Student Clearinghouse (NSC)
• National Directory of Higher Education in Prison Programs

In this article from RealClearEducation, Rebecca Villarreal (senior director at Jobs for the Future) makes the case for prison education programs to hire more alumni upon release.

By the summer of 2023, about 700,000 incarcerated people will be eligible for the federal Pell Grant, gaining access to a critical form of college financial aid for the first time in nearly 30 years. When the 1994 Crime Bill banned Pell for imprisoned individuals, the number of higher education prison programs rapidly dwindled from 1,500 to just eight. With Pell back on the table, institutions are once again designing degree programs for prisoners. But colleges and universities can do more to ensure that the incarcerated are set up for success after their release: they can hire them. 

A biweekly newsletter from Open Campus about the future of postsecondary education in prisons. This edition focuses on technology in prisons.

This news article from Open Campus highlights key takeaways from the 2023 National Conference for Higher Education in Prison (NCHEP). 

This news article from Open Campus is a first-person essay by Leo Hylton, an incarcerated graduate student in Maine who stepped out of the prison gate for the first time in more than a decade for an unusual reason: to meet his students on the campus of Colby College. 

This news article from Open Campus explores how Kunlyna Tauch, a writer incarcerated in California, used the laptop issued to him as a student at California State University Los Angeles. It was the first computer he's used in 17 years of incarceration. 

This news article from Open Campus highlights the work of one of the first incarcerated professors in the country, David Carillo, who teaches incarcerated students in an undergraduate business program at Adams State University in Colorado.

This news article from Open Campus tells the story of James “Sneaky” White, who spent nearly four decades incarcerated in California. Mr. White's nickname “Sneaky” comes from his days as a helicopter pilot during the Vietnam War. While he was incarcerated, Mr. White helped create a college program that has since graduated more than 1,500 men. At the time, San Quentin was the only other prison in the state where incarcerated people could earn degrees. 

This four-part, Emmy-nominated PBS documentary offers an intimate look at the lives and experiences of a dozen incarcerated students participating in the Bard Prison Initiative and their families. The documentary confronts and challenges conventional wisdom about the purpose of both education and incarceration.

This article was written by Katherine Mangan of the Chronicle of Higher Education.

On March 10, 2021, George Chochos, Senior Federal Policy Associate at the Vera Institute of Justice; Rev. Vivian Nixon, Executive Director of College & Community Fellowship; and Max Kenner, Executive Director of the Bard Prison Initiative, joined this webinar to discuss the historical restoration of Pell Grant eligibility for incarcerated students and what the return of federal student aid funding will mean for the field of college-in-prison. Over 150 attendees from across BPI’s network including alumni, supporters, and colleagues in the field joined in the webinar.

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.

The Federal Interagency Reentry Council (FIRC) began work in 2011 to reduce recidivism and improve outcomes related to employment, education, housing, health, and child welfare. Comprising more than 20 federal agencies, the Reentry Council coordinated and leveraged existing federal resources, dispelled myths and clarified policies, elevated programs and policies that work, and reduced the policy barriers to successful reentry.

On April 29, 2016, President Barack Obama issued a Presidential Memorandum that formally established the Federal Interagency Reentry Council to help ensure the federal government continues this important work. 

This report responds to that directive by laying out specific agency actions—development of training, technical assistance, and strategic communications—to ensure federal staff, as well as state, local, and community stakeholders, are aware of the tools available to them, and are using them to implement robust reentry policies and programs.

The Federal Interagency Reentry Council worked to reduce recidivism and improve employment, education, housing, health and child welfare outcomes. Consisting of more than 20 federal agencies, the Reentry Council coordinated and leveraged existing federal resources that were targeted to reentry, used the bully pulpit to dispel myths, clarified policies and provided visibility to programs and policies that work, and reduced the policy barriers to successful reentry. The council was recognized in a 2014 GAO report as one of four model interagency collaborations, and the council’s collective work at the federal level—detailed in this fact sheet—has set a positive example for many states, several of which have started similar councils.

This news article from Open Campus examines the options available to incarcerated students in the state of Florida. The third largest prison system in the country, located within the state, only enrolls 326 incarcerated college students.