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On July 1, 2023, access to Pell Grants was restored to all eligible incarcerated learners in a historic moment representing the culmination of decades of advocacy. With the reinstatement of Pell for this population of learners, experts expect a shift in the higher-education-in-prison landscape as federal funding enables additional institutions to join an educational ecosystem historically dominated by a select number of schools capable of fundraising to support a program. Expanding access to higher education in prison has the potential to be a societal game-changer, as rigorous research conducted on Second Chance Pell Experimental Sites has shown that educational opportunities in carceral settings have myriad positive benefits, including increased facility safety, reduced recidivism and bolstered levels of self-efficacy and confidence among learners who participate.
As readers of the Beyond Transfer blog series will know, collegiate learners are more mobile than ever. The work published on this forum evidences the determination of transfer champions across the nation who use technological innovations and data-driven insights to try to keep pace with today’s students—who earn credits in many places and who come to degree-granting institutions understandably eager to make prior course work count toward a meaningful credential of their choosing.
In October 2022, the New England Board of Higher Education (NEBHE) convened 83 leaders from across the region as part of the New England Commission on the Future of Higher Education in Prison, which issued a set of recommendations serving as a blueprint for the New England states to expand access to high quality higher education in prison in the wake of Pell reinstatement. The Commission was powered by the cross-sector expertise of its members, who included commissioners of corrections, prison education administrators, state legislators, people with lived experience in prison education programs, postsecondary institution leaders and faculty members, state higher education executive officers, business and workforce development leaders, subject-matter experts, scholars, and policy innovators.
The report of the Commission made one point clear: To see widespread benefits, higher education in prison will need to overcome its credit mobility challenges.
Transfer is often a challenging endeavor for nonincarcerated students; it becomes even more complicated when students have earned their credits behind bars. In the context of prison education, there are added challenges that must be considered when attempting to optimize credit mobility for learners:
First and foremost, nearly three decades of federal disinvestment has produced a higher-education-in-prison ecosystem that is fractured and often not aligned with a big picture strategy. Instead, the credit-bearing coursework offered in carceral settings frequently reflects the curricular priorities of individual providers who have been passionate about teaching in this space. As a result, the curriculum is often not designed with an emphasis on maximizing the transferability of credits. While new federal regulations necessitate that credits earned through approved Pell-eligible prison programs must be transferable to at least one other institution in the state, a wider lens on the alignment of course offerings in carceral settings must be taken to maximize benefits for system-involved students and ensure that Pell Grant investments leverage maximum returns for learners.
Beyond this, sentencing reforms have had the secondary effect of reducing the window of time in which incarcerated learners can take college coursework, which makes the mobility of credits earned in prison crucial. Nationally, the average length of sentence sits at 2.6 years, which means that even if students were able to enroll full-time shortly after intake into a carceral facility (which is often not possible), they would need to race to complete an associate degree pre-release. Moreover, bachelor’s degree attainment would entail transferring to a college or university and hoping that higher education institution is ready to accept credits earned during incarceration.
Lastly, while the 12-semester lifetime limit on Pell Grant dollars looms large for all students, for system-involved learners, the cap on this federal source of funding for postsecondary coursework increases the intensity of the decisions they make about enrolling in coursework. Work to ensure the transferability of course offerings on the inside would ideally be paired with robust advising to support incarcerated learners from their initial intake process through re-entry. This would help learners choose the path that is best for them and understand upfront how the bevy of short-term credentials might or might not function as transferable collegiate coursework post-release.
The New England Board of Higher Education (NEBHE) is undertaking exciting new work to increase credit mobility in higher education in prison offerings across the region. Over the next five years, NEBHE will be working to support all six New England states as they generate strategic plans for expanding access to higher education in prison. We will be working to create systems-level progress around credit mobility in this space, engaging not just institutions that are current program providers but as many institutions as possible to ensure that system-involved students can continue their educational career at the broadest possible array of institutions post-release.
There are states and systems who have already made great strides that can serve as models. The State University of New York has done pathbreaking work in this arena by developing a public and independent institution partnership to adopt transfer agreements and align pathways for students moving through the available prison education programs in the state. Washington State successfully passed legislation that, among other things, provides reporting requirements that support the creation and maintenance of transfer-friendly prison education programming.
The good news is that we can apply the lessons that have been learned in the credit mobility work of the recent past to the high-stakes challenges facing this group of learners.
