By Catherine Brown, Senior Director of Policy and Advocacy
Reading time: Three minutes
The 2023 National College Attainment Network (NCAN) National Conference featured two amazing sessions about prison education last week in Dallas, TX. This topic is timely, as the 30-year ban on Pell Grants for incarcerated students was lifted in the Free
Application for Federal Student Aid (FAFSA) Simplification Act, making nearly 700,000 people newly eligible for Pell
Grants. As a result of this achievement, many programs are expected to launch in the coming year and beyond.
The first conference session featured a remarkable panel of practitioners and professionals including Ved Price, Executive Director of the Alliance for Higher Education in Prison;
Joel Strom, Capacity Building Director at University Beyond Bars; and Rachel Zolensky, Vice President of Strategy & Impact at the Tennessee Higher Education Initiative.
The panel was moderated by Molly Lasagna, Senior Program Officer at the Ascendium Education Group. Molly most recently served as the Executive Director of the Tennessee Higher Education
Initiative, giving her a wealth of experience to draw upon in guiding this discussion.
The panel immediately dove into the myriad opportunities and challenges facing incarcerated students. One challenge highlighted was that students who are incarcerated don’t have many options when deciding which courses to take, though they face lifetime
limits on their Pell eligibility. “’There’s a real: just be grateful for you get,’ attitude among some officials working in prison education,” said Strom. The upshot of this situation is that students may end up depleting their Pell eligibility on
courses that don’t position them for good jobs and take away their ability to pay for more valuable college courses when they re-enter the free world. Multiple panelists mentioned lack of quality educational options and limited oversight as constant
problems. Logistics also play a role in preventing students from accessing postsecondary education in prison. Courses must be staffed by prison guards and many prisons are understaffed. These issues are likely to grow as Pell eligibility expands and
more programs seek to open in prisons, said Zolensky.
Another major challenge cited by panelists is lack of access to technology, which makes it hard for students to conduct research, type term papers, and communicate with their professors when they are not in class. On the upside, however, multiple panelists
mentioned that the use of textbooks and other printed materials - and the lack of electronic devices in class - helps students focus. “Incarcerated students are like sponges,” said Price.
The second conference session featured Patrick Rodriguez, Co-Executive Director of the Georgia Coalition for Higher Education in Prison and the Director of Georgia State University's Prison Education Project, and NCAN consultant on our new fellowship
(see below). This session delved into some of the more personal challenges facing students who are incarcerated, such as the stigma students face once they have served their time, the challenges of getting credits transferred to a brick-and-mortar
campus, and the courage students must find to, “talk about the worst thing that happened in their lives over and over and over again” when pursuing a college degree.
NCAN is launching a new fellowship for members who want to delve deeper into this issue and look at ways to adapt
college and success program models to serving people re-entering the free world and those who are incarcerated. This program will provide $20,000 scholarships over two years to a cohort of 10 NCAN member organizations. We will meet virtually each month and will spend the first year exploring the re-entry landscape in our communities and building relationships and trust
with key stakeholders working in the field. In year two, we will expand to working with prison education programs. Ultimately, we aim through this effort to build a set of college access and success programs that can serve students who are incarcerated
and re-entering and support other CAS programs in the same geographic area in doing the same. Applications are due November 8, 2023!
We hope you will apply and encourage you to reach out to Catherine Brown at brownc@ncan.org with any questions.
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