Georgetown to offer bachelor’s degree program to Maryland inmates

Georgetown University will offer around two dozen Maryland prison inmates the chance to get a bachelor’s degree through an expanded scholarship program.

The university said the effort will build on Georgetown’s Prison Scholars Program, which has been offering no-credit courses to D.C. prison inmates since 2018. 

The expansion was funded by the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, which donated $1 million for a three-year grant, the school said in a press release.

Maryland inmates who have at least a high school or a GED diploma will be able to compete for a slot. The program will begin in the next academic year with liberal art degrees being offered to 25 people. 

Those who are chosen will be able to pick from three majors: cultural humanities, interdisciplinary social science or global intellectual history. The degrees are expected to take up to five years to complete. 

Georgetown faculty will teach the classes at the Patuxent Institution, a maximum-security correctional facility in Jessup, Md.