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:

• This week, we have a first-person essay from incarcerated writer Jesse Carson, who writes that prison education programs risk being absorbed into the prison bureaucracy. This story was published in partnership with the Prison Journalism Project. 

• ICYMI: California has more incarcerated college students than any other state in the country, but 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.

‘My college experience behind bars made me feel less than human.’

This story was written by Jesse Carson, the editor-in-chief for the Mule Creek Post, published out of the Mule Creek State Prison in California. He’s a recent graduate in communication studies from Sacramento State University.

I have been taking college classes since 2005. During that time, I’ve completed three associate degrees, earned membership in the international Phi Theta Kappa honor society, and recently graduated from California State University, Sacramento, with a bachelor’s degree in communication studies. But even though I have used my time in prison to educate myself, I’m not sure I’d recommend it to anyone else. 

It is nearly impossible to find a prison education program that treats us like students who happen to be incarcerated, rather than prisoners who happen to be taking college classes. 

Some people think that getting into a college program in prison is the biggest hurdle. But it’s actually harder to remain motivated to stay in college. There are many significant barriers to college for the incarcerated, including filling out paper financial aid forms when everything is processed electronically, finding proctors for exams and doing research for classes when we don’t have internet access. We don’t have access to any of the campus resources that our peers on the outside do. These are all examples of a larger trend that speaks to the prison system’s treatment of us as inventory, not people. 

Once we find our way in, we learn that the prison system has also absorbed college education into its bureaucracy, finding yet another way to dehumanize us. 

Piecing together a puzzle

In my California prison, my community college classes are covered by state grants and my bachelor’s degree is now covered by federal Pell Grants. That’s not the case everywhere. 

When I first started my educational journey, nearly 20 years ago, I still had to pay for all my own books. And after I earned an associate degree, in 2008, I was unable to find a bachelor’s program for less than $1,400 per class. 

Almost all California prisons partner with a local community college to provide a path to an associate degree. This is how most incarcerated students in California start higher education. 

Many times these classes are offered by correspondence only, but some colleges provide face-to-face instruction. Waiting lists to get into classes can be very long, as priority is given to continuing students, and not every class needed to earn a degree is provided in person.

In fact, some colleges only provide the classes required for graduation every couple of years. One school, for example, requires a mass communication course to earn an associate degree, but it is only made available every other year or so, and only for a small class size at each institution. Students may wait years to take their last class to earn a degree.

Other community colleges provide no academic advising, leaving students to guess their way to a degree. I know guys who have been students for years, blindly taking classes hoping to earn an associate degree. They get frustrated that it’s taking so long and feel like they aren’t making any progress. They know what the graduation requirements are, but they have no way of knowing, for example, which classes from other colleges have been transferred, or which classes count as electives and which are major requirements.

It’s almost impossible to earn the degree without piecing together classes from multiple community colleges, but that’s like trying to complete a puzzle with no idea what the picture is on the box. 

This creates a problem for those wanting to transfer their credits toward a bachelor’s degree. The process can sometimes take several years because the associate-level classes they need to meet the degree requirements aren’t always offered regularly. Sometimes students learn that a class they completed to meet a requirement isn’t accepted by a university degree program.

The previously-mentioned community college mass communication class, for example, doesn’t meet Sac State’s mass communication bachelor’s degree requirement, so a student has to enroll in a different community college just to take one single lower-division class. There actually aren’t any community colleges that offer all the lower-division classes required by Sac State.

Finding the elusive bachelor’s degree

Until recent years when universities brought their programs into prisons, students with associate degrees had no chance to earn an advanced degree. And so we largely stopped our education. But even now, once a person has earned their associate degree, it’s another waiting game. Hundreds of students with associate degrees vie for about 50 seats in the three-year bachelor’s program at my prison.

In 2021, I saw a flyer soliciting students for Sac State’s new bachelor’s program at Mule Creek State Prison, where I’m incarcerated. With the return of Pell Grant eligibility for incarcerated students in 2023, there are now nine bachelor’s programs at California prisons, with more coming soon.   

This was welcome news. I had just earned my second associate degree after more than a decade of failing to find an affordable bachelor’s program. I expressed interest in joining the new program to our prison’s education department, but nothing ever came of that — or so I thought. 

One day at work, I learned I had actually been enrolled in classes after all. An officer came up to me and said I had to move to another building “for college.” 

This was a welcome if unexpected development. But that was followed by disappointment. Unlike students on regular college campuses, we didn’t get to select our major. The college offered only a bachelor’s in communication studies. There were no other options. 

None of us would’ve chosen communication studies as a major if given the choice — we all had a different particular subject that really spoke to us. But on the first day of class for Sac State, we were told what courses we would be taking. We were expected to be grateful for the opportunity. 

Not treated like students

In these education programs, we are still considered prisoners, constantly told what we’re going to do and when. We are not treated like students who collaborate in their own education. 

This became even more evident last summer, when I was assigned to the prison’s new life skills class — a mandatory program for those nearing release or facing a parole hearing. The class overlapped exactly with one of the two electives I needed to finish my bachelor’s degree. 

The supervising counselor agreed to let me split my time if I could work it out with my professor, so on the first day of my college classes, I missed an hour of the life skills class to ask the faculty member for flexibility. However, when I showed up for the life skills class, I was met by the guard in charge of attendance, who told me that missing any of the life skills class would result in disciplinary action and removal from the college program. 

Fortunately, I was able to take the college class completely by correspondence; my bunkmate was also in the class and brought me the assignments, which I then turned in on Canvas, an electronic learning management system where students submit assignments. 

But the fact that we found a workaround is beside the point. 

I didn’t even know I had graduated last fall, because I had been told I still needed one more elective. I had been confused and frustrated.

Then some transcripts came in the mail in March, with the line: “Degree conferral date: 1/2/2024.” No congratulations, no letter from the school, no meeting with the program director. Nothing. Just done.

I finally got my actual diploma a few months ago. I’ll admit: there’s something about holding that paper in my hands. Normally I’m not the type who gets much pride out of my accomplishments, just the satisfaction of a completed project. I’m actually proud of this when I see it, and I’ve been sharing it with others. 

But I am also relieved that it’s over. 

Obviously, college programs in prison must adapt to the environment, and sometimes that means doing things the way that prisons want them done. Professors are visitors in a foreign land and can be kicked out if they don't follow certain rules and regulations.

But there’s a difference between following rules and becoming a part of the system itself, treating students like they are just warehoused inventory waiting to be told what to do. As more colleges expand into prisons, I can only hope that they start to treat us the way they describe us: We are their students too.

Related coverage:  

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

• ‘I had never owned a computer. After 17 years in prison, I finally have one of my own.’

• ‘You need to stop having your pity parties and do the work.’

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.

We know that not everyone has access to email, so if you’d like to have a print copy College Inside sent to an incarcerated friend or family member, you can sign them up here. We also publish the PDFs of our print newsletter on the Open Campus website.

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