Prisoners now have access to Pell Grant educations — but face a tough road to get them

While Pell Grants will soon give access to free college for more than 760,000 inmates under an expansion announced this month, experts warn of inequities and difficulties that will plague incarcerated individuals looking for a degree.

Prison education programs are shown to lower recidivism and boost employment opportunities, and, for the first time since 1994, incarcerated Americans are now eligible for Pell Grants while they serve their time if their facility has access to education programs and they get chosen in the highly competitive process. 

There are two main obstacles prisoners hit when moving to receive a college education: access to a program that works for them and the ability to apply. 

Access to post-secondary degree programs inside prisons is limited to facilities that actively have a college working with them to provide them. 

Vera, an institute working to end mass incarceration, found in the 2019 to 2020 school year, some 372 colleges out of the almost 6,000 in the United States offered credit-bearing classes to inmates. 

The Federal Bureau of Prisons doesn’t offer an exact count of the facilities with such programs, but Campus Explorer reported last year that 40 percent of prisons provide the opportunity for inmates to study for college degrees.

Even prisons with programs won’t work for many because around 70 percent of inmates can’t read above a fourth-grade level.

Applicants also must meet a marker of good behavior. Black and Hispanic inmates are more likely to face discipline in prison, leading more white prisoners to have access to the college programming. 

Vera found in a study of the Obama administration’s Second Chance Pell Experimental Sites Initiative that white prisoners were enrolled at a higher percentage than their portion of the overall prison population in college programs.

“I think the culture inside becomes one that these individuals need further punishment and locking them down and isolating them becomes their treatment and they do not have access to the very things that could be helpful to them. So I think that’s one of the pieces of inequity,” said Lois Pullano, executive director of Citizens for Prison Reform.

If a prisoner can eventually reach a program that works for them, it will still be a struggle to get the Pell Grant needed to complete the degree for free. 

In order to apply for a Pell Grant, prisoners will need to fill out a FAFSA and get the information needed such as transcripts from other schools they were previously enrolled in.

And those with an outstanding debt at a previous higher education institution can not receive a Pell Grant. 

To resolve issues with FAFSA or other difficulties prisoners might run into, they would need access to the internet, which many do not have or only have in restricted, limited time. 

This can lead to bigger burdens on the schools involved.

Mary Thomas, director of Ohio State University’s Ohio Prison Education Exchange Project, said, “OSU will have to provide a whole host of students services and support of utilizing the Pell Grants because you can’t fill out a FAFSA on your own when you’re in prison.”

“We’re going to have to provide staffing to do all of that on their behalf, which means the university is really gonna have to invest a lot of time by staff to be able to make this work,” she said. 

Although she hailed the expansion of Pell Grants as a great step, Thomas said Ohio State is working to raise private funds for their project in order to keep up with the additional costs.

She added that Ohio State has been working with one all-women’s prison, which are underrepresented in having these types of programs, and focusing on inmates who have longer sentences. 

“It’s well known that people who serve life sentences are really the anchors of any prison. They’re the ones who end up being stabilizing forces within the prison itself,” Thomas said, adding the “impacts of quality high-quality higher education in prisons create more stable prison environments.”

Ohio State has been giving classes to the facility for free as it is seen as a good learning opportunity for students who choose to go to the prison to take a class with the inmates. 

In the end, only 30,000 prisoners will receive a Pell Grant to pursue a college degree which will cost around $130 million a year for the aid. 

“Everyone who will apply for the degree will have a high school diploma or a GED just like any person who’s applying to OSU needs, and it’ll be a competitive application process,” Thomas said. “They’ll have to write essays and complete the application […] Really the goal for higher ed and prison projects is to be sure that you’re doing very similar work and providing similar services that you do on campus.”