Higher Education Outcomes: Why We Need Student-level Data

How Philanthropy Can Create Public Systems Change

Giving Compass' Take: • Rebecca Silbert and Debbie Mukamal highlight a story of how one philanthropic initiative transformed access to public higher education for incarcerated and formerly incarcerated Californians. • How can donors support change in California’s public colleges and universities so that they would serve incarcerated and formerly incarcerated students as part of their mission? • Learn more about successful prison partnerships for graduating incarcerated students.  Recently, publications ranging from Rolling Stone to The Wall Street Journal have been promoting the value of college in prison. Most incarcerated men and women will eventually return home, and they are as capable and deserving of college opportunities as anyone else. Plus, the fact that a college education can reduce recidivism and is cost-effective makes it politically attractive to both the Right and the Left. The critically acclaimed 2019 Ken Burns and Lynn Novick documentary, College Behind Bars, builds on the momentum with a compelling four-part series that follows a small group of incarcerated men and women as they earn their college degrees through the rigorous Bard Prison Initiative in New York State prisons. It is notable, then, that in less than five years California has transformed its public higher education system to serve incarcerated and formerly incarcerated men and women statewide. In 2019, California’s community colleges were teaching in-person classes in 34 of the state’s 35 prisons, serving almost 6,000 students each semester. Five years ago, no community colleges were teaching face-to-face in the state’s prisons. Incarcerated students seeking something other than correspondence courses had to await transfer to the only prison with an in-person college option, San Quentin, where the private Prison University Project served a few hundred students. Now, thousands of students in prison are enrolled in the same courses that the local community college offers, with identical standards, learning outcomes, and degrees. This represents astonishing growth in a short period of time. But these five years saw more than just an increase in prison programs. California engaged in a coordinated and intentional shift in public policy, which resulted in a new landscape for incarcerated and formerly incarcerated students. In this new landscape, California’s community colleges align their degree pathways so that incarcerated students who are moved from one prison to the next—an unfortunately common event—do not have to start from scratch in the new prison but can continue building toward a degree. For those who finish their associate’s degree, Cal State LA offers an in-person bachelor’s degree completion program at Lancaster prison, where the incarcerated students are fully matriculated as if they were on the college’s main campus. Read the full article about how philanthropy can create public systems change by Rebecca Silbert and Debbie Mukamal at Stanford Social Innovation Review.