When the U.S. Department of Education announced last summer that federal Pell Grants would become available to incarcerated college students, lawmakers and state corrections agencies scrambled to adjust statutes and step up potential partnerships with universities.

But nearly a year later, colleges and agencies are recognizing the steep administrative challenge to winning approval from the U.S. Department of Education. So far, just one new program eligible for the federal financial aid grant — in California — has gotten off the ground.

“We’re going to see an impact — it’s coming. It’s been a bit slow to arrive because of this quality focus within the regulations,” said Ruth Delaney, who leads a program at the Vera Institute of Justice to help scale up college programs in correctional institutions. “What’s great is that there’s a lot of energy in colleges and corrections to start new prison education programs.”

Pell Grants were officially restored for incarcerated students in July 2023, following a nearly 30-year federal ban that prohibited most incarcerated students from receiving the aid. The ban was one of the provisions in the sweeping signed by President Bill Clinton.

More than 750,000 incarcerated students could potentially become eligible for Pell Grants. But to qualify, they must be below the family income limits and be at a prison that offers a college program approved by the federal Department of Education.

To date, only one has been fully approved, at Pelican Bay State Prison in northern California. Students there will be eligible to receive Pell Grants starting next fall to study for a degree in communications from California State Polytechnic University, Humboldt.

Still, officials from state corrections agencies in Maryland, Michigan and Wisconsin told Stateline that since Pell dollars became available, more colleges and universities have become interested in establishing prison education programs. Since last summer, 44 state corrections agencies and the federal Bureau of Prisons have applications or other systems to approve prison education programs, according to the Vera Institute of Justice.

“There are people in prison who have been waiting 30 years for this opportunity to come back, and they are just so eager to enroll,” Delaney said in an interview. “Anything we can do to move quickly to get high-quality programs in place — that’s what we’d like to see.”

State action

The Pell Grant, awarded by the U.S. Department of Education, is provided to low-income students across the country to help cover college expenses. Most students apply online using the Free Application for Federal Student Aid, or FAFSA. Incarcerated students are usually required to submit paper applications because internet access is restricted. The current maximum grant is $7,395 for a full academic year.

While states pay to house incarcerated people in their prison systems, many don’t pay for higher education; prison college programs often rely on alternative funding, such as donations and state grants. Some are a part of a federal pilot program called the Second Chance Pell Experimental Sites Initiative, which has included about 40,000 incarcerated learners. Otherwise, students have to pay out of their own pockets or use scholarships and donations from nonprofits and colleges.

No matter how it’s paid for, the goal of providing college-level instruction in prisons is to make it easier for incarcerated people to reenter society once they are released and to connect them to meaningful, good-paying jobs.

“College saved my life. It was a place where I could be free. I could read, I could learn, and I could grow. It was very transformative for me, and I realized that my life wasn’t over,” said Alexa Garza, who obtained two associate degrees and a bachelor’s degree while incarcerated in Texas. Garza now works as a Texas policy analyst and higher education justice initiatives analyst for The Education Trust, an education access advocacy group.

Prison education advocates say it’s important for schools to expand the college experience in prison beyond just offering classes. That means fostering meaningful relationships between professors and students.

“I didn’t have family in the courtroom. I had professors in the courtroom,” said William Freeman, who served time in Maryland and now leads the Justice Policy Fellowship at The Education Trust. “Now, I’m a first-gen everything — college graduate, homeowner. I don’t think my parents ever made the kind of money I’m making now.”

Many state lawmakers have worked, with varying outcomes, to boost prison college programs in anticipation that Pell Grants could help more incarcerated students earn degrees.

In Washington state, for example, a set to take effect in June will allow more incarcerated learners to seek both federal and state financial aid grants to cover the costs of postsecondary education programs.

Maryland’s legislature has sent Democratic Gov. Wes Moore a that would require that the state corrections department help incarcerated students in accessing Pell Grants and set goals for participation. Moore’s office said the legislation is under consideration.

A Florida that would have allowed students to be eligible for in-state tuition even if they had been incarcerated in the state in the past year made it out of House and Senate committees but was tabled before the legislature adjourned.

And in Montana, lawmakers state corrections officials after a found that prison education and workforce programs are limited, featuring long waitlists and inequitable access between private and public facilities.

New programs and partnerships

Corrections agencies and colleges in several states have recently announced new partnerships, with some soon to become Pell-eligible.

Maryland’s corrections department recently with the University System of Maryland to provide incarcerated students with the opportunity to obtain bachelor’s degrees or credit-based certificates from any of the 12 system universities. The university system will also be able to accept Pell Grants.

Danielle Cox, the state corrections department’s education director, said she aims to have a college or university program at every state facility by 2027.

In Utah, female incarcerated students at the Utah State Correctional Facility can apply to a new bachelor’s program at the University of Utah through the school’s Prison Education Project. At least 11 of 15 prospective students already have received their admissions decisions, according to Erin Castro, an associate professor of higher education at the University of Utah and co-founder of the Prison Education Project.

“This is the first time that the flagship public institution is admitting a currently incarcerated cohort,” Castro said.

The Nebraska Department of Correctional Services and Southeast Community College are to offer more higher education opportunities to students in five state facilities. The college enrolled 229 students this spring semester, and also is working on gaining the federal approval to offer Pell Grants as an official prison education program.

The college now offers an associate of arts degree in academic transfer, and in the fall will offer an associate of applied science in business and more career and technical education programs.

Bureaucratic barriers

But navigating the new application process from the U.S. Department of Education has required significantly more administrative labor, some advocates say.

At least one university so far has decided to pull the plug on its prison education program. Georgia State University cited the feds’ new rules for Pell Grants and a $24 million budget cut as reasons to this summer, according to Open Campus, a nonprofit news outlet that reports on higher ed. The program has been in operation since 2016.

“The shape and tenor of this new system is causing significant damage to the framework of college-in-prison,” Jessica Neptune, the director of national engagement for the Bard Prison Initiative at Bard College in New York, wrote in an email to Stateline.

“Much of the recent policy work related to Pell, especially, is moving in a direction that makes it harder and harder for colleges to just be colleges and not criminal justice interventions,” she said.

The Department of Education did not directly respond to advocates’ concerns about the new application requirements, but said it held a “negotiated rulemaking process that enlisted significant stakeholder input to put forward the best regulations possible.”

Some prison education advocates also argue that the new bureaucratic process isolates the mission of educating incarcerated students from that of other students and encourages the “othering” of current or formerly incarcerated individuals.

“Whenever we are creating separate systems for individuals — particularly when they’re incarcerated — that reinforce processes, isolation and marginalization, it is not going to go well,” said Dyjuan Tatro, a senior government affairs officer with the Bard Prison Initiative and a Bard College alum.

“Incarcerated students should have the same access to Pell Grants, full stop, as any other students in this country,” Tatro said.

is part of States Newsroom, a nonprofit news network supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Stateline maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Scott S. Greenberger for questions: info@stateline.org. Follow Stateline on and .

Sean Carnell, who grew up in Boise, never saw himself pursuing a college education. He was sentenced to prison on battery and robbery charges in 2013 — where he later received his GED. He faces another four years before he can be considered for parole.

Despite his past, Carnell made the dean’s list at the University of Idaho for the last two semesters in a row.

Carnell, a resident at the Idaho Correctional Institution in Orofino, attends college through the Second Chance Pell Experiment — a program launched by the U.S. Department of Education which provides need-based Pell Grants to people in state and federal prisons.

“I never thought I’d have straight A’s, let alone be enrolled in college,” Carnell told the Idaho Capital Sun. “Having the hope of achieving something, of being able to walk out and say I did something with my time to try to better myself, is huge.”

Like Carnell, more than 90 residents at the Orofino prison registered for the spring semester through the Second Chance Pell program — keeping themselves busy in prison while also aiming to enhance their resumes in preparation for their eventual release.

“This is the first time in corrections that I’ve felt that I’ve been valued as a human being,” Carnell said. “Most of the time we are the sum of our failures. This gives us the opportunity to try to achieve these levels of success that we never thought possible.”

Thirty years later, Idaho prisoners have access to college education

Three decades ago, the federal government removed Pell Grant eligibility for incarcerated individuals through the Federal Crime Bill of 1994. The ban was enacted amid a wave of “tough-on-crime” policies in the 1990s.

But in 2015, the Obama administration reinstated access to Pell Grants for incarcerated individuals as began to show that prison education plays a role in decreasing crime.

According to the , incarcerated people who have participated in postsecondary education in prison are 48% less likely to reoffend than those who do not. Additionally, every dollar invested in prison-based education results in four to five dollars in taxpayer savings from reduced incarceration costs.

Between 2016 to 2020 — the first four years of the reinstated access to Pell Grants — over 7,000 prison students earned either an associate degree, bachelor’s degree, or a certificate or diploma, according to the .

, the University of Idaho and Lewis-Clark State College became the first schools in the Gem State to participate in the program — bringing the total number of colleges participating in the program to 200.

Most courses are asynchronous and are conducted virtually at the prison’s school space using designated laptops. However, some university professors make on-site visits to the facility, accompanied by non-incarcerated students.

While the program requires a lot of partnership and collaboration between the schools and correctional staff, Sean Quinlan, the dean of the University of Idaho’s College of Letters, Arts and Social Sciences, told the Sun that it is worth it.

“Access to higher education and to complete college degree as an inmate is one of the surest predictors for keeping people from crime in the future,” Quinlan said. “I believe that this is a really important way of serving our state – to help people improve their lives and have safer communities.”

‘They’ve been waiting for something like this’: IDOC education director says

Ted Oparnico, the Idaho Department of Correction education director, told the Sun there was significant interest from correction residents to participate in the program.

In Idaho, some incarcerated people earn between an hour, so the Second Chance Pell program makes it possible for them to fund their education beyond a GED or certificate.

“I think they’ve been waiting for something like this for a long time,” Oparnico said. “We typically only provide GEDs as our secondary certificate, but once they complete that, well, what’s next? They might have another five or 10 years or longer left, so having a Pell program gives them some opportunities to continue education.”

Students in Idaho prisons are still in their first few semesters of having access to the Pell Grants, so none have graduated as of yet, Oparnico said.

Silas Parks, who was on manslaughter charges for killing his pregnant wife, told the Sun he has been excited to see this program come to Idaho.

“I have literally day-dreamed for over 10 years sitting in prison about getting out of prison and going back to college,” he said. “I’m still here, but I can go back to college which is an awesome experience.”

Parks attended the University of Idaho before going to prison, but he did not complete his bachelor’s degree. Now enrolled with the financial help of the Second Chance Pell Grant, he is close to receiving his degree. His next goal is to receive a graduate degree once he is released.

“I came to prison when I was 23, and I was not the most mature person,” he said. “Now I know what I want. Nothing teaches you what you want more than having everything taken away.”

To participate in the program, residents have to have a GED or high school diploma and be six months without any disciplinary offenses. They also must complete a 20-hour college preparatory course, and commit to at least a semester of a class or pay back the funds if they choose to leave.

“It’s a benefit for the community,” Oparnico said, adding that 90% of prison residents will eventually be released from the Idaho correctional system. “When we have people who leave our facilities, the public can know that they’re getting a neighbor that has an education because they spent the time, commitment, and they dedicated themselves to being better prepared to contribute to society.”

‘Everybody can do this’: IDOC resident says about college

Like Carnell who never saw himself attending college, and like Parks who acknowledged his immaturity at the time of his sentencing — Travas Bickhart is also proud of the personal growth that’s come with being a college student in an Idaho prison.

Giving more attention to alcohol and drugs, Bickhart graduated high school with roughly a 2.8 GPA, despite paying people off to do his homework, he told the Sun.

In 2018, Bickhart was sentenced to up to 20 years in prison on rape charges, with the possibility of parole after 10 years.

Despite being the first person in his family to go to prison, he is also the first person in his family to receive a college education. He told the Sun that he’s learned a lot about himself in the process of taking college courses.

“You can’t give up on yourself,” he said. “No matter what your position is or what crime you’ve done, everybody can do this. I’ve made a lot of mistakes in my life, but this is the only thing I’ve been proud of to this point.”

is part of States Newsroom, a nonprofit news network supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Idaho Capital Sun maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Christina Lords for questions: info@idahocapitalsun.com. Follow Idaho Capital Sun on and .

Georgia State University is blaming federal rules for the return of Pell Grants as a primary reason for its decision to close its this summer.

The program won’t admit any new students but the university said it has a plan to help currently enrolled students at two state prisons finish their programs, which could take up to two years.

Officials cited the administrative challenges of securing federal financial aid, as well as a $24 million budget shortfall, as factors leading to the university’s decision to halt classes at three correctional facilities, according to a statement sent to Open Campus. The program has been operating since 2016.

Pell Grants are the federal financial aid for low-income students. In July 2023, for the grants for the first time since the 1994 crime bill, which banned federal financial aid for prison education. More than 750,000 students are now eligible for aid, but they must be at a correctional facility that offers a college program approved by the federal Education Department.

Georgia State’s decision means that around 60 current students, according to numbers provided by faculty, at two state prisons and one federal facility may have to postpone their dreams of earning a degree inside. Incarcerated college students already face significant challenges in completing their degrees because of course disruptions and other interruptions outside of their control.

“These students have been disappointed in their lives over and over and over again,” said Katherine Perry, an English professor at Perimeter College, which is part of Georgia State. She was one of the three faculty members who co-founded the prison education program in 2016.

“For me, it’s so important that they not put education in that bucket of things that let them down because that’s why most of them didn’t get their education before.”

Perry felt blindsided when faculty and staff received an email at the end of November from Cynthia Lester, interim dean of Perimeter College, announcing the decision. The email cited “financial constraints and the substantial administrative demands” of seeking Pell approval from the federal Education Department.

“The decision was not made lightly, but it does reflect the university’s commitment to responsible fiscal management and ensuring existing educational initiatives receive the necessary support and resources,” Lester wrote in the email.

Perry said the program has faced financial challenges in the past but they have always been allowed to fundraise. “In this case, when we went back to say, ‘Can we just raise the difference?’ they said no,” she said. “And that makes me scratch my head.”

The program has received at least $700,000 in grants since 2022, which may help fund the program for continuing students. In 2023, Georgia State from the Mellon Foundation to fund a literary journal through the prison education program.

Students at the two state prisons have also been able to use Pell Grants since 2020.

According to the statement, Georgia State faced a substantial budget cut of $24.4 million in fiscal year 2024 and anticipates another shortfall next year. The university estimated that the instructional and administrative costs of operating its prison education program across three correctional facilities would be around $180,000 in addition to money that they have received from donors.

The university also noted the challenges of meeting the “complex requirements” and “ongoing commitments” of the Pell application process, including navigating the paperwork for the federal Education Department, the accreditation process, and meeting key indicators such as job placement, expected earnings, recidivism rates, and completion rates. The spokesperson also expressed concerns about Georgia State’s ability to commit to providing services such as tutoring, counseling, and career guidance to incarcerated students.

Georgia State is exploring alternative avenues to recognize “the importance of supporting the educational needs of individuals impacted by incarceration,” including discussions with donors to establish a new program catering to students who have a personal experience with incarceration, according to the statement.

Big questions about the future

Last week, Georgia State students calling on the university to reverse the decision. As of Wednesday, 46 faculty members had also signed a asking Provost Nicolle Parsons-Pollard to continue the program.

Some experts in the field are also concerned about what Georgia State’s decision to shutter its program might foreshadow for other college-in-prison programs across the state and country.

“We have the fourth largest prison system in the country and we have a really underserved population here,” said Stacy Bell, an English professor at Emory University and board member of the Georgia Coalition for Higher Education in Prison. “And without Georgia State, it raises really big questions about what’s happening to the higher education-in-prison movement here in Georgia.”

There are currently around 50,000 people incarcerated in the state. The Georgia Department of Corrections did not respond to a request for comment.

Ruth Delaney, director of the Unlocking Potential initiative at the Vera Institute, a nonprofit that provides technical assistance to prison education programs, expressed disappointment at the decision.

“The federal regulations for Pell-funded prison education program require colleges to deliver postsecondary educational programming that is of comparable quality to that which the students at the other location of the college receive,” she wrote in an email. “Many of the services, reporting, and processes GSU describes are standard practices that accredited colleges already follow to serve their non-incarcerated student bodies.”

Last May, nine men at Walker State Prison in Rock Springs from Georgia State, becoming the university’s first class to graduate inside. Three more incarcerated students at Phillips State Prison in Buford graduated in December.

Around 19 students at the federal United States Penitentiary Atlantain September through Georgia State. In January, university officials announced they would no longer be continuing to offer classes at the penitentiary. Georgia State then asked the University of West Georgia, which is planning to launch a Pell-funded bachelor’s program at the federal facility in the fall, if they would accept the associate’s students, according to Tiffany Parsons, a sociologist and director of West Georgia’s prison education program.

West Georgia currently offers classes toward a bachelor’s degree to one cohort at Hays State Prison, a maximum security men’s prison. It’s one of two prison bachelor’s programs in the state, Parsons said.

The other four-year program is offered at Lee Arrendale, a women’s prison, through Life University. That program is also in flux after corrections officials they were downsizing the prison.

Faculty have been working with the students at the penitentiary to help with the transition, Parsons said. She will be going into the federal facility to better understand what the students’ needs are and what kinds of support services West Georgia can provide going forward. “We will have to be there a while and earn those students’ trust,” she said.

The incarcerated students were informed about the decision in mid-February. Perry, the English professor, said her students at Walker seemed fearful that they wouldn’t be able to finish their degrees, despite assurances that Georgia State had a “teachout plan,” including the possibility of another college picking up the program in the state prisons.

“Maybe it’s because they’re so used to systems letting them down,” Perry said.

A teachout plan outlines how an institution will help its students graduate if it stops operating before all students have completed their programs. Georgia State did not respond to follow-up questions about the details of its plan.

Many of the students who graduated in 2023 began their associate’s program when the program started in 2016, so it’s unclear how the current students, most of whom started last fall, will finish within two years.

Perry said the students asked her to quantify the odds that they’d be able to finish with Georgia State. One student felt particularly strongly about graduating from the same college because his kids were also enrolled at the university.

Just like on the outside, incarcerated students feel that being at a particular college is part of their identity as a student. “That’s what it means to be a proud Panther,” Perry said.

This story is published in partnership with , a nonprofit newsroom focused on higher education. Subscribe to , an Open Campus newsletter on the future of postsecondary education in prison.

is part of States Newsroom, a nonprofit news network supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Georgia Recorder maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor John McCosh for questions: info@georgiarecorder.com. Follow Georgia Recorder on and .

El Paso Community College has entered into a contract with the Federal Bureau of Prisons to teach incarcerated students the necessary welding skills to make them legitimate candidates for in-demand, good-paying jobs upon their release. 

The program should launch this spring.

The EPCC Board of Trustees approved the five-year, $520,000 agreement last month. To prepare, EPCC must hire a full-time instructor, while the leaders at the Federal Correctional Institution, La Tuna, need to upgrade its camp facilities in Anthony, Texas.

La Tuna is a low-security prison for incarcerated males located about 20 miles northwest of El Paso. According to its website, it has about 690 inmates and offers vocational training in welding, automotive and office technology. The prison’s satellite camp will house the inmates picked for the welding program.

This is the latest effort between the two entities to prepare people who are incarcerated to transition back into society. Blayne J. Primozich, associate vice president for Workforce & Continuing Education at EPCC, said it was part of the college’s mission to assist underserved populations.

“(Incarcerated students) earn time off their sentences for every course they complete, but the idea is also to make them workforce ready,” Primozich said. “That’s key to reducing recidivism.”

According to the U.S. Bureau of Justice Statistics, approximately 600,000 Americans are released from state and federal prisons annually, and they add to the almost who have been arrested or convicted for a crime. That connection to a criminal past can make it difficult to get a job, let alone one that pays well.

According to a 2022 report published by the Prison Policy Initiative, approximately 60% of people who were incarcerated in a federal prison do not have a job up to four years after their release. To put it in perspective, the U.S. had an unemployment rate of in 2020 during the pandemic. The current unemployment rate is 3.7%.

A Corp. analysis showed that incarcerated people who participate in education programs are 43% less likely than others to be incarcerated again, and the government saves $4 to $5 in reimprisonment costs for every dollar spent on prison education.

While the college and the prison have collaborated for more than 20 years, this is the college’s first big effort to teach at the prison since the pandemic. Olga L. Valerio, dean of EPCC’s Advanced Technology Center on the Valle Verde campus, said prison officials will select the participants for the certification program, which should last from six to eight months. Each cohort could have as many as 14 students.  

EPCC officials said that the college has collaborated with La Tuna on other similar training programs that teach interior and exterior vehicle renovations, and Heating, Ventilation and Air Conditioning. Valerio said participants with those skills have become successful workers and, in some cases, business owners, upon their release.

“This has opened doors for them,” Valerio said.

Primozich said that the college’s goal is for the La Tuna students to earn their American Welding Society certifications in Shielded Metal Arc Welding and Gas Metal Arc Welding. The courses would include theory, safety training and hands-on experience with industrial welding equipment.

Once certified in those welding processes, those participants will be ready to work in maintenance and manufacturing shops, steel construction sites and oil field operations, according to the abstract presented to the trustees. The size of employers range from big companies to small businesses.

According to Salary.com, the average salary for an entry-level welder in El Paso County is $40,843 as of January, but salaries could range from about $36,300 to $46,800. Those who move out of the area could earn more.

The welding courses, which are free to the students, are funded in part through the government’s First Step Act. Congress passed the legislation in 2018 to promote rehabilitation services such as job training, lower recidivism, and to reduce sentence times.

An August 2023 brief in included an announcement from the Department of Justice that the recidivism rate of those people who used the First Step Act was lower than those who did not. The report stated that of the nearly 30,000 people who gained an early release because of the program, almost 90% had not been rearrested or reincarcerated. In contrast, a 2021 article in the stated that within three years, about 66% of formerly incarcerated people are rearrested, and more than 50% are reincarcerated.   

College and prison officials said that they will do what they can to help the certified welding students to find a job after they are released.

Louis Castillo, industry project manager with Workforce Solutions Borderplex or WSB, said having an up-to-date certification in an in-demand field helps, but people who were incarcerated also need to find a company that will give former felons a chance.

People who recently were released from prison often deal with barriers to employment. Among those Castillo listed were homelessness, substance abuse, mental health issues, the stigma of a criminal record, and a lack of reliable transportation.

“When an employer is looking at two candidates, a lot of times those kinds of biases will have them choose the one who doesn’t have the record,” Castillo said.

The WSB manager said that there are openings for skilled laborers such as welders. However, he said that jobs outside the region could pose a logistical problem for people who must stay in a certain area as a condition of their parole. While La Tuna prisoners come from throughout the country, most are from the southwest.

Sandra Quiñonez, La Tuna’s supervisor of education, said the prison is in early discussions with EPCC and the University of Texas at El Paso to offer college courses inside the institution using Pell Grant funds. As of July 1, 2023, the U.S. government made Pell Grants available to qualified people who are incarcerated so they can pursue a college education.

Quiñonez said that the effort will proceed after the institutions submit the required documentation to the U.S. Department of Education.

A UTEP official said the university is in talks to offer some courses at La Tuna, but there is nothing official to report yet. EPCC did not respond to a request to comment.

This first appeared on and is republished here under a Creative Commons license.

To Syrita Steib, the University of New Orleans denied her first application for admission in what seemed like lightning speed.

With equal speed, though, the university accepted her second application. The difference? The second time around, Steib didn’t disclose her criminal history.

“I checked the box, I was denied within 24 hours,” said Steib, founder and executive director of . “When I reapplied and didn’t check the box. I was accepted within 24 hours.”

The box she refers to affirmed that she’d been incarcerated, serving 10 years for burglary and arson of an auto dealership.

With that prison sentence and her 2016 graduation from UNO behind her, Steib, a member of the Louisiana , launched her organization. Through it, she researched, helped shape and lobbied for legislation resulting in Louisiana becoming the first in a list of what Operation Restoration lists as  banning questions about criminal history on admissions applications to public colleges and universities.

That question, however, isn’t the only barrier to college for formerly incarcerated people. Others include such things as application fees and lack of understanding of college financing such as student loans.

“There are structural factors and inequalities in criminal justice, such as poverty, that can shut out individuals from getting an education,” said Wanda Bertram, spokesperson for the .

“It’s a really large lift to attend college and work,” said Patrick Rodriguez, co-executive director of the . “It takes a lot of dedication to get to the point of even being able to apply. It just takes a bit of extra help to get across the application line.”

Here are some helpful resources and strategies for overcoming some of those hurdles.

Get College Application and Admissions Test Fees Waived

The  provides the how-tos of getting fee waivers for the  accepted by more than 1,000 institutions and what the College Board says are roughly 2,000 colleges and universities that issue those waivers.

Fees for  and tests measuring academic competency also may be waived by those testing companies. Once applicants get either an application waiver or test waiver from one school or testing center, they’re in a better position to get other waivers because they’ve started gathering information about income, whether they receive food stamps or other public assistance and such.

Before applying to college, of course, applicants must have a high school diploma or .  from the Prison Policy Initiative estimates that roughly 25% have not.

Some of those individuals were incarcerated before age 18 and need help finishing high school by passing the  test, in lieu of earning a diploma, and eventually, with college admissions, said Bertram, of the policy initiative. Those individuals also may seek waivers of the GED tests fee waivers and enroll in free tutoring programs, she said.

Tap Into Peer-Run and Other Re-entry Organizations For Former Prisoners

“Don’t limit yourself to groups and resources in your state,” Bertram said. You can contact an array of groups and individuals across the country for guidance.

The  is a national organization partnering with ,  and similar organizations.

Additionally, as examples, California State University’s  is expressly for formerly incarcerated students on that campus.

(Some examples of projects offering accredited college instruction to people who begin their education while still behind bars are Tulane University, which partners with Operation Restoration, and the City University of New York, which runs its  program. Also, the )

Searching online for “formerly incarcerated education” and the name of a state will yield such programs and ones that, for example, review applicants’ essays and personal statements, aiming to increase their chances of being admitted to college.

Target colleges that don’t require disclosure of criminal history — and ones that do

Those choosing to include their prison experiences and related background in their college essays may target colleges that openly state that they welcome former prisoners or that don’t require applicants to disclose their criminal backgrounds. Though New York State, for example, has no law banning disclosure of criminal history on applications to public colleges, applicants to the State University of New York’s 64 campuses and the City University of New York’s 25 campuses don’t require such disclosure.

Nevertheless, it may not be necessary to limit oneself to schools that either openly embrace former prisoners or that don’t make them disclose their criminal history. Formerly incarcerated people have been admitted to schools requiring disclosure of their criminal backgrounds. Rodriguez, of the Georgia Coalition for Higher Education in Prison, was one of them.

He submitted to Kennesaw State University, his Georgia alma mater, a 14-page essay detailing the dates and circumstances of his crimes and how he had grown beyond those experiences.

He sought help in crafting his story. “I don’t know if I would have gone to school if Bill Taft from  weren’t there,” Rodriguez said. “It was really nice having somebody hold me accountable and have an honest conversation about what the next steps are in the application process.”

But New Orleanian Steib took a different approach.

“When I applied to medical school, I didn’t apply to any school that said they consider incarceration in their admissions process,” said Steib, now a hospital lab supervisor. “I wasted some application fees on schools that did discriminate, but didn’t list [that reality] on their site.”

Apply for scholarships expressly for former prisoners and federal Pell grants

Income-based , funded by the U.S. Department of Education, are available to the formerly incarcerated and, after being revoked in 1994, .

In addition, several private organizations and colleges themselves give scholarships to formerly incarcerated. They include the , ,  and the .

Dozens of colleges, including ,  and  in California, offer scholarships for those who were formerly incarcerated.

Youth Today is a nonprofit news site for people who care about and work with children and youth.

This is the second in a series of stories about education opportunities in Ohio’s prisoners. Read the . 

Dexter Bass earned his bachelor’s degree from Ashland University behind bars.

The 60-year-old was sentenced to prison in 1990 for murder and was recently granted parole. Before prison, his highest academic attainment was graduating high school.

“What education does is it opens up a whole other world to a person and makes them just more confident in themselves,” Bass said. “When I started going through a lot of classes, and then I had little gradual successes, that built up my confidence, and I realized, wow, I can do so much more.”

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The Ohio Capital Journal recently toured the education classes offered at Richland Correctional Institution (RiCI), a prison in Mansfield with about 2,560 incarcerated men.

RiCI, which opened in 1998, sits next to the Ohio State Reformatory, where The Shawshank Redemption was filmed. It is a Level 1 and Level 2 facility, meaning it has the lowest level of security. A prisoner’s behavior determines what level they are in. Ohio has five levels of prison security — with Level E being the highest.

“The Level 1 and 2’s, what we decided, are those are our guys who are conducive to learning,” Black said. “Those are the guys who, hopefully, aren’t getting into as many fights.”

RiCI enrolled 738 students in various Ohio Central School System (OCSS) programs, and there were an additional 143 students in apprentices in July, said JoEllen Smith, spokesperson for Ohio Department of Rehabilitation and Correction (ODRC).

The OCSS is a state-supported school system through the Ohio Department of Rehabilitation and Correction (ODRC) that provides educational opportunities to the incarcerated. All 28 of Ohio’s adult prisons have educational opportunities, said OCSS Superintendent Jennifer Sanders.

Through the OCSS, those who are incarcerated can earn their GED, associates or bachelor’s degree. OCSS also offers apprenticeships and career technical training opportunities in over 25 career tech fields, Sanders said.

“This is an investment in the people’s lives to allow them to leave us and not come back,” Sanders said. “Research is very clear that post-secondary achievement does reduce recidivism.”

Those who participate in some type of education program while incarcerated were up to 43% less likely to return to prison and were 13% more likely to be employed, according to a .

Ohio prisons release 18,000 people each year on average.

“It’s a rehabilitative necessity,” Sanders said. “In our view, it is an investment in the future of Ohio. We want to make sure that we are providing the educational opportunities they need, those tools they need so that when they come back in Ohio they can do so and be productive citizens.”

According to ODRC, 3,247 students earned advanced job training (college) certifications or degrees and 959 students earned high school equivalency certifications during fiscal year 2023.

“It allows you to accomplish something that nobody can take from you,” said RiCI’s Warden Kenneth Black. “I want them to get everything they can while they are here so when they go home, they are doing the right thing and taking care of their kids and parents.”

The classes also teach them life skills.

“I tell these guys that once you get your education, what one thing does, it teaches you to communicate on a different level,” Black said. “And our folks really need to learn to communicate on a different level. Sometimes they got here based on their communication skills, and not understanding.”

Bass said he has learned patience, endurance and how to deal with frustration through the classes he has taken.

“It really teaches you all those soft skills that you really need,” he said.

Ashland University

ODRC has partnered with seven Ohio colleges and universities including Ashland University, which offers courses at RiCI.

“As these men and women do leave the institutions, there’s far more opportunity to venture into higher wage jobs,” said James Cox, the assistant vice president of correctional education at Ashland University.

Randy Jones started taking classes through Ashland last year and plans to graduate with a degree in communications and a minor in Christian ministries next year.

“Having an opportunity to take classes to continue my education is just wonderful,” the 51-year-old said. “It’s so important because even though we’re in (prison) when you step into this classroom, it’s like being out of prison.”

Jones, who was sentenced on July 2, 2015, for involuntary manslaughter, previously earned his bachelor’s at the University of West Florida and his master’s in business administration at Hodges University.

“Since I’m here, I want to get a communications degree to help broaden my skill set,” he said.

Jones hopes to be an inspirational speaker when he gets out of prison and talk to young people about “how to avoid pitfalls.”

“Getting a degree in communication is going to open up those doors,” he said.

Apprenticeships

During fiscal year 2023, 683 students earned apprenticeship certifications, according to ODRC. The apprenticeships offered range from baker to graphic designer to welder.

Evan Norris never bothered with computers much before prison. Now, he is helping create a 100-page cookbook using InDesign in the visual communication classroom at RiCI.

“I’m more fluent with it now though,” the 36-year-old said. “It took me a long time to get (InDesign).”

He was sentenced on six counts of rape in October 2013, and earned his GED while in prison in 2018. He is currently working on a graphic design apprenticeship and is thinking about taking classes through Ashland.

“I think (the classes are) very important,” Norris said. “They are beneficial. People should take advantage.”

Lynnmarie Fye, the visual communications teacher at Hope Valley School at RiCI, is consistently impressed by her students’ talents.

“Honest to god, they’re like naturals,” Fye, who has worked at RiCI for 22 years, said. “They have it within them.”

Career technical

The career technical education programs range from auto technology to barber to carpentry. 1,484 students earned career technical education certifications during fiscal year 2023, according to ODRC.

OCSS prioritizes prisoners for career technical courses who are nearing their release date.

“We want to make sure they are getting up to date skills at the time they are going to use it when they leave,” Sanders said.

Brandon Houston earned his GED two months ago and enjoys the auto body and welding classes.

“I like seeing progress in myself,” Houston said. “I have skills now.”

He hopes to take classes at Hobart Institute of Welding Technology in Troy after he is released next October. The 26-year-old was sentenced on Dec. 13, 2021, for two counts of felonious assault and two counts of aggravated vehicular assault.

Barber school

Rhonda Grys helped open the barber school at RiCI in 1999. It started with 20 students and now the two-year program has at least 30 students.

The students must pass a safety test before being allowed to work on the floor, and an incarcerated person can come to the barber shop twice a month for a haircut.

Incarcerated students can even take their state board exam to become a licensed barber, which requires clocking 1,800 hours of training. With a license in hand, they could get a job at a barber shop in Ohio.

“We’ve had so many students say they never finished anything in their life,” Grys said. “This is their first accomplishment that they’ve ever done in their lives.”

Garden

Savalas Crosby helps take care of RiCI’s organic vegetable garden in the prison yard — including peppers, tomatoes, corn, asparagus, strawberries, potatoes, broccoli, cauliflower and Brussels sprouts.

“It’s quite a variety,” the 48-year-old said. Crosby was sentenced in November 2002 for murder, possession of drugs, and weapon under disability.

RiCI donates all the food to charities in the Mansfield area and they hope to produce 2,000 pounds of food this season, which runs from March to October.

Challenges to teaching prisoners

There are some unique challenges when it comes to teaching incarcerated people.

Each student has varied education backgrounds.

“Everybody has bits and pieces, so you have to find the gaps that they’re missing and then work with them to overcome those gaps,” said Joel Morrow, a teacher at Hope Valley who was awarded the Outstanding Adult Educator Award for the State of Ohio.

“A lot of people had failures in the school system,” Morrow said. “So they have to learn to believe in themselves and believe in the system.”

Some of the men don’t have computer skills, said Lisa Poff, the drafting teacher at Hope Valley.

“The world is not as forgiving as it needs to be sometimes, but we try to get them all the skills that get them ready to be able to do that,” she said.

What’s next?

When Bass gets out of prison, he wants to get his master’s degree and teach in correctional education.

“I feel that’s probably where I’ll be most effective in inspiring guys, especially so they can see someone that has already done it,” he said.

is part of States Newsroom, a network of news bureaus supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Ohio Capital Journal maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor David DeWitt for questions: info@ohiocapitaljournal.com. Follow Ohio Capital Journal on and .

In July, a federal rule change ended this ban, instantly making 767,000 incarcerated people eligible to use Pell’s $7,395 annual stipend to pay for higher education. For advocates who have long sought this reversal, including college officials and justice reform proponents, there’s a realization that now, the hard work will begin.

“It’s so easy to turn things off,” said Ruby Qazilbash, deputy director of the Policy Office for the federal Bureau of Justice Assistance. “It’s difficult to turn them back on,” she added, referring to the arduous process needed to create new prison education programs. 

Ben Jones, education director for Wisconsin’s Department of Corrections, issued a warning to college and prison officials: “It’s not only a lot of work, but it’s expensive work.”

The move back toward allowing incarcerated students to access federal student financial aid began in 2015, when President Barack Obama initiated the . This allowed 67 colleges to begin prison education programs and made Pell funds available to those schools’ imprisoned students. By 2021-22, those 6,000 participants had more than doubled, to 13,186, according to a . In all, nearly 41,000 incarcerated students participated in Second Chance Pell, earning about 12,000 credentials.

Then, 2½ years ago, as part of the FAFSA Simplification Act, Congress that ended the ban, effective this past July. Celebrating the Pell ban rollback at a conference in Washington, D.C., this summer, James Kvaal, undersecretary of the U.S. Department of Education, said that this “expanding opportunity has transcended politics.”

Now, colleges and prisons in nearly every state are attempting to create new initiatives. There’s no official count of how many schools are starting to offer classes behind bars, but enthusiasm is high, said Ruth Delaney, Vera’s associate initiative director. 

But crafting a college program inside prison isn’t easy.

There are three main steps: colleges and prisons must design a course of study, have the plan approved by the school’s accreditors and, if students will attempt to use Pell funds, apply for authorization from the U.S. Department of Education.

Jones is part of his state’s committee that reviews prospective programs. That group sets concrete guidelines for everything from how students will access technology to how frequently professors will hold office hours. “We’ve scared some schools away” because of the number of questions asked, he admitted.

Laura Ferguson Mimms, executive director of the Tennessee Higher Education in Prison Initiative, agreed with Jones. “Operational things can create so many barriers” in prison programs, she said. “We want to know everything” about the plans. 

When building a relationship between a prison and a college, both sides need to “go slow in order to go fast,” she said. 

The idea of each state setting up a task force to oversee prison education programs is gaining momentum, Delaney said, especially because all federally approved programs need to be reviewed after two years. Having a formal structure in place before a program starts can lessen review surprises, she said. Up to 15 states, including Tennessee, Kansas, Mississippi, Georgia and Michigan, have task forces, Delaney said. These groups typically include college accreditors, state higher education officials, incarcerated people and corrections officials. 

The structure of prison education programs can vary widely, from full-time in-person classes to hybrid to fully online. While most schools prefer in-person instruction, a hybrid option can allow incarcerated students to mix with those who are on campus, Delaney said, sometimes increasing the types of courses that can be offered to those imprisoned. At California’s Pitzer College, students participating in the Inside-Out program travel to the California Rehabilitation Center to take in-person classes with incarcerated students. Three imprisoned students from the center graduated with bachelor’s degrees this summer. 

While the rollback marks a major change for higher education prison programs, Delaney said, many may avoid using Pell Grants if they can find funding elsewhere. “Pell is fantastic, but it’s very hard to file a FAFSA [form] in prison” because incarcerated students often cannot access the proper documentation, she said. Filing the federal financial aid form is required to receive a Pell Grant.

In states, such as Tennessee and California, that offer residents free community college tuition, it’s easier to use state funding than Pell Grants. That’s the case for College of the Redwoods, a community college in northern California that has been running classes at the supermax Pelican Bay State Prison for eight years.

But, using Pell funds is key for a new bachelor’s degree program being set up by California State Polytechnic University, Humboldt, said Steve Ladwig, director of the school’s Transformative and Restorative Education Center. 

That program, which begins in January, will enroll students who have completed an associate degree with College of the Redwoods. Although Pell eligibility doesn’t factor into acceptance decisions, “with Pell, we can serve a lot more students,” Ladwig said. 

Being chosen for Second Chance Pell also changed the University of Wyoming’s program. The school had started by offering single classes to imprisoned students without putting anyone on a path to a degree. But because Pell funds can cover full-time students’ tuition, the university ramped up its Pathways from Prison program, said Robert Colter, co-executive director. “Pell is absolutely critical for creating a sustainable degree path.” 

Wyoming’s program started at the state’s only women’s prison so the university would not have to deal with students being transferred to other facilities, Colter said. But the school also just launched a program at a men’s prison for the fall semester, he added.

Like Wyoming, College of the Redwoods began with one group of students taking one class, said Rory Johnson, dean of the Pelican Bay Scholars Program. There are now as many as . “We started small and just added as we got better at it,” he said.

Beyond financial considerations, reinstatement of Pell is meaningful for imprisoned students, said Humboldt’s Tony Wallin-Sato, a formerly incarcerated individual who has earned a college degree. “It tells people who are incarcerated, you do deserve this, you are human beings. It validates something.” Wallin-Sato is the program coordinator of the school’s Project Rebound, a program that helps formerly imprisoned students attend college. 

As colleges explore creating programs behind bars, Colter cautioned, they must pay attention to the demands that starting a prison program places on internal staff. Instructors might have to adjust classes for students who can’t access the internet or create a way to run a lab inside a correctional facility.

And because prisons are typically located far from college campuses, travel can be a major consideration. Wyoming Women’s Center is in rural Lusk, 2½ hours from the university. Because of the distance, classes are hybrid, with most instructors visiting the prison at least once, Colter said. The distance between Humboldt and Pelican Bay is 83 miles; while the university plans to make all its classes face to face, winter might impact traveling on rural roads, officials said. 

While it is typically not difficult to find instructors willing to be part of a prison program, Colter said having the backing of the entire school is vital. In Wyoming’s program, student support officials go to the prison to help with enrollment and to hunt down transcripts. “That can be really hard sometimes,” he added. 

Johnson agreed that it is important to get different department officials to buy into a program, even if most of them will never visit the prison. For example, Redwoods had eliminated all its paper forms, but because of limitations on technology in the prison, it had to re-create a system to enroll imprisoned students using paper, he said. The school also created a policy to accept unofficial transcripts because so many long-term incarcerated people at Pelican Bay had trouble procuring accurate documents. 

It’s not clear how many students it might take for a college program to break even financially, said Delaney, adding that Vera plans to conduct a cost analysis of prison programs soon. But Mark Taylor, a formerly incarcerated prisoner who earned a degree at Humboldt, came up with his own calculus. He estimated that California spent $1.5 million to keep him locked up for 21 years. “I earned a bachelor’s degree for under $30,000, and now I’m paying taxes, a significant amount.” Taylor is a youth outreach coordinator at Project Rebound.

“At some point, you’re asking the wrong question if you’re asking if we can afford” prison education programs, said Maxwell Schnurer, a Humboldt communications professor and the leader of its upcoming prison program. “It’s more like, can we afford to have a bunch of uneducated folks in our community? I would say no.”

“It’s not just about having them pass classes,” said Colter. “We have a saying at our school: Prepare for complete living. That’s what I have in mind.”