Congress voted last summer to reinstate Pell Grants to incarcerated students, a major victory for students and advocates who have been denied federal financial aid for nearly three decades.
A year later, colleges and correctional institutions have made significant progress in launching new Pell-eligible programs and expanding existing ones to meet new federal regulations. But the current programs still have work to do to better serve incarcerated students, according to a recent report from the Vera Institute of Justice, a research and policy organization focused on criminal justice issues.
The report provides a “snapshot” of the progress colleges are making in creating new Pell credential programs and assesses the “quality, equity, and scale” of current prison college programs at a time when they are ready to grow. It found that while many programs meet important quality standards, such as hiring qualified faculty, they fall short on other key measures, including some required by new federal regulations, such as access to academic advising.
“This is, as far as we know, the first report of its kind,” said Ruth Delaney, director of Vera’s Unlocking Potential initiative, which supports the development of college-in-prison programs. “There is very little national data on college-in-prison,” and “even less research that attempts to measure the outcomes of these programs.”
The report is based on a survey of correctional institutions and 140 higher education institutions operating academic programs in 47 state, territory, and federal prison facilities, collected between November 2023 and March 2024. A total of 153 colleges and universities offered programs during that period. The program allows incarcerated students to receive Pell Grants for certain programs under the Second Chance Pell pilot program that began in 2015. The report rated each jurisdiction or prison system as “adequate,” “inadequate,” or “developing” on 15 different indicators, including the ease of transferring credits between institutions of higher education and the availability of libraries and research materials.
“We’re trying to establish a floor for what it means to be a quality program in prison,” Delaney said. “What we really want to think about in the future is where the ceiling can be.” The program “has to be worth investing the limited Pell Fund dollars of incarcerated students into.”
Progress toward Pell qualification
The new proposal for the Pell Eligibility Program is currently undergoing a multi-step approval process. Under recent federal regulations for the Pell Eligibility Program, college programs in prisons must be approved by the state correctional agency, the Federal Bureau of Prisons or Sheriff, the accrediting agency, and the U.S. Department of Education.
The report noted that every state, Puerto Rico and the Bureau of Prisons have established procedures for reviewing Pell credential program proposals, which was not the case a year ago. Delaney noted that at least 50 new colleges and universities participating in the program have received approval from correctional institutions this year. So far, only one new program has been reviewed and approved by the Department of Education: a bachelor’s degree in communications through California State Polytechnic University Humboldt at Pelican Bay State Prison.
Delaney said while the bureaucratic process is slow moving, the numbers are encouraging and show “a lot of enthusiasm” from colleges and correctional institutions to expand academic offerings in prisons, at a time when “there’s still a lot of interest and unmet need among students.”
The report highlights that at least 45,000 incarcerated students have enrolled in college through Second Chance Pell, and those students have earned more than 18,000 certificates. But they represent only a fraction of the estimated 750,000 inmates eligible to enroll, according to the report. And most of them, about 70 percent, have said in surveys that they are interested in pursuing higher education. The inmate population is also disproportionately comprised of people of color. About 32 percent of inmates are black and 23 percent are Latino or Hispanic, compared to less than 14 percent of the U.S. population, which is black and only 19 percent Latino or Hispanic.
Erin L. Castro, associate dean for prison pathways for undergraduate education at the University of Utah and director of the Prison Higher Education Research Collaborative, said she expects “both the number of colleges and universities that choose to provide services to inmate students and the number of inmate students that enroll in them to increase dramatically.” At the same time, she said, “there are a lot of unanswered questions” about how to best serve them.
Castro, who is also an associate professor of higher education, said the report begins to answer some of those questions and addresses a long-standing need among researchers and advocates for a “framework for quality, equity, and equality of outcomes.”
space for growth
The report found both cause for celebration and concern about the quality, equity, and expandability of existing prison college programs.
On a positive note, the report found that most jurisdictions have policies in place to facilitate the transfer of credits between higher education institutions. Nearly all jurisdictions provide instructors with the same range of credentials as those who teach in college programs outside prisons, and provide students with opportunities to interact with professors in person rather than just remotely.
However, many of the colleges surveyed were unable to ensure that students could continue their education after release. Additionally, 11 of the jurisdictions offered programs in men’s prisons that women’s prisons did not. Most jurisdictions provided students with “inadequate” access to libraries and research materials, academic and career counseling, and technology to improve education and build digital literacy skills.
Castro noted that while limited access to technology is common for incarcerated students, it can have far-reaching implications for their futures after release. Learning skills, such as how to conduct Zoom calls or use learning management systems like Canvas, are crucial to helping them find jobs or continue their education outside of prison.
“This is clearly an equity issue,” she said.
Stanley Andres, executive director of From Prison Cells to PhD, an organization that helps people who have been incarcerated get back into the workforce, said it’s important for the program to develop a plan to help students re-enter the workforce. That could include connecting with local community organizations to help with housing and job-readiness skills, and making sure credits transfer to other college campuses and allow students to finish their current program after release.
Andris, a former incarcerated man and now an assistant professor and endocrinologist at Howard University School of Medicine, notes that colleges aren't used to offering readmission assistance as part of their student services.
“This is not something they normally think about, and that’s not a bad thing,” he said. But “they need to collaborate and look to outside sources to figure out how to do this better,” especially those with criminal records.
The report also found that programs are not reaching enough of their prison populations. In 24 jurisdictions, current prison college programs enroll less than 5 percent of those eligible and interested in higher education, while another 16 jurisdictions enroll only 5 to 9 percent of those individuals.
Andris added that it's important to remember that in some prisons, there are no Pell support eligibility requirements at all.
“There's still a lot of work to be done before the idea of Pel becomes viable for everyone,” he said.
The findings suggest that programs may need to change to comply with federal regulations. After two years of operation, each Pell-eligible program must undergo a “best interests determination,” a quality assessment by the correctional institution. They are evaluated on four indicators, including credit transfer, instructor credentials, how academic and career counseling compares to what is offered on other campuses, and whether students can easily continue their education after release.
But universities should aim to go beyond those standards, and they should do so by leveraging research like Vera's, Castro said.
“If we want our students to have experiences that make a big impact, if we want our students to have high levels of student engagement, if we want our students to have transformative undergraduate experiences, and if we want our students to have high-paying jobs with dignity and respect, there’s research in higher education that tells us what kinds of experiences our students need,” she said.
Delaney said one of the report's most important takeaways is that prison college programs need more robust student support services in addition to high-quality academic offerings.
“We learned how to provide college in prison through Second Chance Pell,” she said. “And the next step we need to take is figuring out how to deliver the full college experience.”