Equitable Prison Education Begins with In-Person Instruction
By Pavithra Nagarajan, Senior Research Associate, and Neal Palmer, Research Project Director
As part of the College-in-Prison Reentry Initiative, CUNY ISLG worked with seven education providers who had to unexpectedly pivot from in-person coursework to remote online instruction at the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic. The recent reinstatement of Pell Grant eligibility and the Tuition Assistance Program (TAP) for people in prison has led to a number of higher education providers initiating or expanding existing programs, including options for online course delivery – which may not always be a good thing.
The reinstatement of federal and state funding for incarcerated students is ushering in a new era for college-in-prison programs. Individuals who were formerly foreclosed from educational opportunities while behind bars will now have broad access for the first time in nearly three decades. Prior to reinstatement, college facilities in New York were able to accommodate only 4 percent of incarcerated people with high school credentials, leaving long wait lists.[1] Prospective students are not the only ones eager for this opportunity: colleges and universities are expected to establish new or expand existing programs in correctional facilities to meet the demand.[2]
During this scale-up period, colleges and universities may be considering technology and remote instruction to help with expanding access to programming. These education providers, however, must balance the priority of educational access with instructional quality, particularly in settings where technology access can already be limited. Insight from the College-in-Prison Reentry Initiative (CIP) offers a blueprint for the instructional considerations that accompany this expansion.
CIP was funded in 2017 by the Manhattan District Attorney’s Office through its Criminal Justice Investment Initiative (CJII), which invested $7.3 million in postsecondary education in New York State correctional settings, ultimately serving 931 students from seven higher education institutions and in 17 prisons statewide. The Initiative sought to ensure that programs were commensurate in quality to more traditional settings (i.e., in the community), addressed gaps from students’ prior educational experiences, and addressed other academic needs particular to pursuing a college education while incarcerated through one-on-one advising, writing workshops, and introductory research skills, among other supports. CUNY ISLG conducted a five-year, mixed-methods process evaluation of CIP to assess its implementation inclusive of the methods that stakeholders devised to ensure that the experience was of high instructional quality despite the limitations of the prison setting.
The Initiative sought to ensure that programs were commensurate in quality to more traditional settings (i.e., in the community), addressed gaps from students’ prior educational experiences, and addressed other academic needs particular to pursuing a college education while incarcerated.
Like other institutions of higher education, CIP education providers were faced with shifting from in-person to fully remote coursework with the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic in March 2020. Although grateful for the opportunity to continue classes, students and faculty alike described remote coursework as inferior to in-person instruction.
The Challenges with Online-Only Instruction
Overall, faculty and students felt that in-person instruction was more effective and fulfilling. Faculty described that in-person instruction provided more options for instructional format (e.g., lecture, discussion, seminar, workshop) and the ability to more easily develop meaningful faculty-student relationships. Faculty reported creating opportunities to connect with students one-on-one during class to clarify course content, learn about students’ academic interests, and build connections. With remote instruction, however, faculty tended to opt for lecture-style classes, rather than discussion-based classes, given logistical difficulties such as being able to hear all students well and in an efficient manner. Additionally, standard correctional facility protocols restrict students and faculty from communicating outside of the prison setting, with the exception of monitored written correspondence. This means that scheduling or facilitating individualized support outside of class time would be difficult if not impossible. As a result, faculty were not able to provide the same opportunities with remote instruction as they had with in-person instruction.
Students also felt that they were better able to engage with the material via in-person instruction, as they were better able to ask questions to clarify misunderstandings. CIP students overwhelmingly described their frustrations with remote instruction, with one explaining that: “If you didn’t understand and had a question, [you] couldn’t get a hold of the teacher.” In one CIP facility where all but one of the courses were still taught remotely as of Spring 2022, students said that they were not able to ask professors questions over the web platform: “They can’t hear us and we can’t hear them.” As one professor described, “there are a lot of nonverbal cues that I can glean when I’m in the classroom with my students that I can’t get [virtually],” and that it is “all just much easier in an in-person environment.” The professor posited that with remote instruction, “from a student’s perspective, there’s [still] an exchange of ideas, but it’s not as intense or as rapid as it is with in-person instruction.” Faculty and students, therefore, found that in-person instruction more readily supported discussion and additional, individualized support for students as they engaged with course material.
“There are a lot of nonverbal cues that I can glean when I’m in the classroom with my students that I can’t get [virtually . . . it is] all just much easier in an in-person environment.”
In addition to limiting opportunities for students to receive additional assistance from faculty, remote instruction limited students’ abilities to interact with and learn from their peers and to be challenged by alternative viewpoints. Restrictions on movement within correctional facilities constrain the amount of time students can spend with one another. Traditional students often rely on this interaction to further their learning as they progress through their degree programs in the community. Understandably, CIP students described remote instruction as more isolating, as they were not able to utilize their peers as part of a learning community to the same extent as they had with in-person, discussion-based classes. One student described remote instruction as having “only your and their [the professor’s] perspective”. In contrast, students characterized in-person class discussions as valuable, “very interactive,” and as an opportunity for students to bring in their personal experience and “hear other perspectives.” Students noted that professors help students think critically in these discussions: “if everyone agrees, the professor pushes us to think about it another way.”
The Benefits of In-Person Instruction: “You Cannot Replace This”
Overall, faculty and students expressed gratitude when courses resumed in person, both because of the higher quality of instruction and because it provided more opportunities for positive interactions. Multiple professors described more opportunities for one-on-one conversations during class time, sometimes breaking to talk with each student individually about an assignment and leaving other students to work independently. “You cannot replace this,” one student described. Another student said that remote instruction, in contrast to in-person, may lead to “missing the whole concept if I don’t interact with teachers.”
Ultimately, college-in-prison programming must be commensurate in quality to college education in traditional settings in order to provide an equitable experience and meaningful benefits to incarcerated individuals. In-person instruction provides the best chance to approximate the high quality of instruction and meaningful classroom culture of a traditional, campus setting, and therefore, should be considered the gold standard required to engage in equitable educational practice for college-in-prison. Therefore, remote instruction should only be used in cases where it can supplement in-person education, rather than replace it. Remote instruction can provide meaningful opportunities for enrichment that might otherwise not be possible in a prison setting including: courses for which an instructor cannot travel to the facility, guest lectures, and demonstrations.
For more on The College-in-Prison Reentry Initiative, see this report and the accompanying executive summary. Also refer to the Vera Institute’s interim outcome evaluation report, which found a 66 percent reduction in reconviction among CIP students compared to their peers
[1] Avey, H., Farhang, L., Purciel-Hill, M., Santiago, F., Simon-Ortiz, S., & Gilhuly, K. (2015). Turning on the TAP: How Returning Access to Tuition Assistance for Incarcerated People Improves the Health of New Yorkers. Human Impact Partners. https://humanimpact.org/hipprojects/turnonthetapny/.
[2] Ascendium Education Group. (2023). Rethinking College Behind Bars: Groups join forces to reach prison learners newly-eligible for federal financial aid. https://connect.chronicle.com/rs/931-EKA-218/images/CHE_CollegeBehindBars_Ascendium.pdf
By NuPenDekDee on Adobe Stock.