Incarcerated community college students in California struggle to pass correspondence courses

A biweekly newsletter about the future of postsecondary education in prisons. Written by Open Campus national reporter Charlotte West.

Short on time? Here are the highlights:

• California has more incarcerated college students than any other state in the country, but a new report raises questions about the quality of the education they’re getting. More than 60% of the classes taken by the state’s incarcerated community college students are correspondence courses, which have lower completion rates than face-to-face classes. Read the full story here.

• ICYMI: Check out our profiles of four graduates from college programs in New York state prisons, copublished with Teen Vogue.

Incarcerated Californians are doing college by mail. It makes it harder to get to the finish line.

California has more incarcerated college students than any other state in the country, but a new report raises questions about the quality of the education they’re getting. 

The majority of California’s 10,000 incarcerated community college students are enrolled in correspondence courses, which students were less likely to complete than face-to-face classes. And that fact is despite a 2021 law that requires the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation to prioritize face-to-face instruction. 

California’s 116 community colleges make up the largest higher education system in the country and it’s one of the few states to allow incarcerated students to use state funding to take college classes. But the prevalence of correspondence courses with low completion rates is a problem because getting a degree while inside is shown to reduce the likelihood of going back to prison, and students who want to pursue bachelor’s degrees face challenges transferring. 

California community colleges receive $37 million per year in state funding to educate incarcerated students. Sixty percent of the classes they offer in California state prisons are via correspondence, according to a report published by the state Legislative Analyst’s Office last week. 

Prison education has also become an enrollment boon. Incarcerated students studying via correspondence make up a significant portion of overall enrollment for some California colleges. But there is little oversight, and linking state funding to student performance could give colleges more incentive to improve student support services, according to the study.

In correspondence classes, students receive printed course packets that they work through on their own. They submit assignments and receive instructor feedback via mail or through the prison’s education department. Correspondence courses are easier to offer for a few reasons: in-person classes are hindered by a lack of classroom space, and some programs have difficulty recruiting faculty, particularly at prisons in rural communities.

Overall, the analysis found mixed outcomes for incarcerated community college students. Incarcerated students finished classes at similar rates to the overall community college population, but completion rates for correspondence courses were lower than for in-person courses offered inside. Incarcerated students were also less likely to continue their education or and graduate compared to the overall community college population (less than 5% vs. 20% within three years). Factors that impact these metrics also include lack of access to technology, frequent lockdowns that restrict students’ access to educational materials, and prison transfers. 

The average time it takes for an incarcerated student to graduate is 9 years, the analysis found based on data provided by the California Community Colleges Chancellor's Office.

“Our students need more than just books through the mail”

Romarilyn Ralston took both in-person and correspondence courses during the two decades she spent in California prisons. She was released in 2011 and is now the senior director of the Justice Education Center for the Claremont Colleges, which offers an accelerated bachelor’s degree at the California Rehabilitation Center in Norco. 

Students will often transfer into the program based at Pitzer College with very strong transcripts and might have multiple associate’s degrees earned via correspondence. “It looks great on paper, but when they transfer in they don't have the right foundation,” she said. 

Ralston said that students who have had face-to-face instruction have less performance anxiety and understand classroom dynamics better than students who have primarily studied via correspondence. Students in correspondence programs have to study by themselves and are often only assessed via multiple choice tests that don't help them master the knowledge they need for upper division classes, she said. 

They also miss out on the social skills that come with in-person instruction. “Folks just don’t understand how to engage with professors or peers in the classroom,” Ralston said. 

Ralston would welcome more oversight of correspondence programs. “If we want to continue to offer distance education to thousands of students incarcerated across California, they need more than just books through the mail,” she said. 

Other takeaways from the legislative report include:

• Enrollment in community college programs at California state prisons has surged in recent years, increasing nearly 300% from 2015-16 to 2018-19, even as overall community college enrollment in the state has declined.

• Some California colleges offering correspondence courses are experimenting with using the Canvas learning management system to facilitate assignments and instructor feedback. 

• Correspondence courses are easier to deliver in prisons due to space and staffing constraints, but that poses challenges for students that want to continue their education in California’s rapidly expanding bachelor’s degree programs because there are some courses like lab sciences and public speaking that usually must be taught in person. 

• The current state funding model for community college programs in prisons is based solely on enrollment, with no performance-based incentives, which the report suggests could limit colleges' focus on student support services.

• The report also recommends that California colleges should seek approval to offer federal Pell Grants in lieu of state funding for associate’s degrees, but that process could be a heavy administrative lift for resource-strapped community colleges. 

Read the full story here. 

News & views

Emma Hall, a former fellow with the CalMatters College Journalism Network, wrote about an investigation by the Los Rios Community College district in California into nine faculty teaching in its prison education program for the Sacramento Bee. The district claimed the physical transportation of letters detailing student concerns about the program possibly violated a California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation policy, which requires a prison warden to approve the transport of letters. The investigation cleared the faculty members of any wrongdoing, but the future of the program remains uncertain, Hall wrote. 

One year after incarcerated students once again became eligible for federal Pell Grants, the Vera Institute of Justice published an overview of states’ progress towards expanding access to the federal grants. Since 2016, more than 45,000 students across the country enrolled in postsecondary education funded through Pell Grants and earned more than 18,000 credentials.

The Washington Post reported that a group of formerly incarcerated people in Virginia filed a class-action lawsuit at the end of June against leaders of the Virginia Department of Corrections, seeking damages for the time they allege Virginia wrongly imprisoned them beyond their release dates. The state legislature had created incentives for incarcerated people to reduce sentences by participating in education and other programs, but the suit alleges that the corrections department refused to offer some individuals the sentence credits they had earned.

Let’s connect

Please connect if you have story ideas or just want to share your experience with prison education programs as a student or educator. You can always reach me at [email protected] or on Twitter, LinkedIn, or Instagram. To reach me via snail mail, you can write to: Open Campus, 2460 17th Avenue #1015, Santa Cruz, CA 95062.

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