Incarcerated students from Mount Tamalpais College at San Quentin State Prison
“We’re constantly concerned about incarcerated students as a vulnerable population—and we instead need to approach them in higher education in similar ways as we do first-generation students and students from economically disenfranchised communities,” said Dr. Mary Gould, the director of the Alliance for Higher Education in Prisons, a nonprofit advocacy and research organization for college programs in prisons.
She stressed that people in prison are often given substandard resources “because it’s seen as okay to give them something rather than nothing.”
When it comes to college programs that can get federal dollars from Pell Grants, Gould worries that predatory practices in prisons could flourish if reporting mandates on program quality as well as equity are not careful.
Last fall, the Department of Education (ED) launched a subcommittee on prison education programs during its negotiated rulemaking sessions. These sessions bring together higher education stakeholders with an ED negotiator to tackle big issues like the college affordability crisis and how for-profit colleges will be regulated. The subcommittee on prison education has meanwhile been debating next steps in the Pell Grant expansion to incarcerated people.
While guidelines are a start, some advocates voiced concern about how such rules will be enforced inside prisons. This includes whether the accreditation process for college programs will take a close enough look at the kind of instruction that incarcerated people will get. Many people in prisons may additionally need college preparatory coursework before they can work towards a degree. If that preparation is not factored into programs, then a lot of people will likely be either unable to participate or the program expectations will be lowered.
“If you really want to create federal funding for this, I think you should probably create block grants and tie them to a clear, detailed set of standards, as well as a concrete system for ensuring compliance,” said Dr. Jody Lewen, founder and president of Mount Tamalpais College, which provides a free associate’s of arts degree program and college preparatory program to people incarcerated at San Quentin State Prison in California.
