A year ago, California State University, Dominguez Hills started the state's first master’s degree program for incarcerated students, with the goal of creating a pathway for a growing number of college graduates to continue their education behind bars. Already, its future is uncertain.
The state agency that paid tuition for 31 students in the inaugural class of the humanities graduate program says it may have made a mistake.
Not all of the students funded by the Department of Rehabilitation, which provides vocational services for people with disabilities seeking employment, should have been deemed eligible for its services, officials said. And that means that both students already enrolled and new ones seeking to start the grad program may have no way to pay for classes.
Now, students are anxious and college officials are scrambling to find alternative ways to cover tuition costs.
More than a month after classes officially started, around a third of the 41 students who had been accepted into the program’s second cohort had not yet received funding. The rest of the students are in limbo: some have explicitly been denied funding, others are waiting to see if the funding will be approved, and a few haven’t even had interviews about their eligibility for support yet. And some students in the first cohort are wondering if they’ll be able to finish their degrees.
Access to graduate programs inside is becoming increasingly important as the number of bachelor’s programs in prison grows with the return last year of Pell Grant eligibility for incarcerated students. Since the first incarcerated bachelor’s graduates got their degrees from California State University Los Angeles at the state prison in Lancaster in 2021, California prisons now offer 11 bachelor’s programs, with two more starting next year.
Several of those Cal State LA grads continued on to the master’s program, which is open to students across California’s 34 prisons. It’s part of the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation commitment to offering education “from grade school to grad school.” Research shows that the higher the level of education someone achieves in prison, the less likely they are to return to prison once they are released and the more likely they are to find a job.
Graduate programs in prison are rare. The few master’s programs that are available are usually print-based programs where students submit their assignments and communicate with professors via mail. The Cal State Dominguez Hills program is different. Most of its students have laptops that allow them to communicate with their professors and also interact with their classmates on moderated discussion boards.
But the current challenges facing the master’s program highlight the vulnerability of prison education programs that rely on a single funding source. Programs must often cobble together funding from various sources, sometimes resulting in tenuous partnerships between agencies with different primary missions. The situation underscores the need for diversified and sustainable funding models for prison education programs.
The federal rules are clear
The Department of Rehabilitations funds people, not programs, said Kim Rutledge, deputy director of legislation and communications. The agency is primarily focused on preparing individuals with disabilities to find jobs. "Sometimes we pay for education as a part of getting someone to competitive, integrated employment, but we're not strictly an education program,” she said.
Although the agency serves people with disabilities in California, its funding primarily comes from federal workforce dollars. That money has clear eligibility rules, said Mark Erlichman, deputy director of vocational rehabilitation.
The guidelines mean the agency cannot fund individuals who don’t have job opportunities in the near future without putting the entire agency and the population it serves at risk. As a result, the agency can’t in most cases provide money or services to incarcerated students who are not expecting to be released soon.
“We have a program that served 154,000 Californians with disabilities last year,” Erlichman said. “There's no flexibility that wouldn't jeopardize our entire program.”
Counselors evaluate individuals on a case-by-case basis to see if they can receive services from the Department of Rehabilitation. Eligibiity to receive financial support includes having a disability that significantly hinders someone’s ability to work and being able to benefit from services to achieve employment in a competitive, integrated setting.
In practice that means a job in the community that pays at least minimum wage. Individuals who are serving life without the possibility of parole or other long sentences are generally precluded from finding such employment.
“Therefore they would not be eligible for our services, which in this case is asking for education to be paid for," Rutledge said.
Most prison jobs would not meet the competitive employment criteria either. Incarcerated individuals in California usually earn less than $.74 an hour.
Much of the Department of Rehabilitation’s work with the incarcerated population is with reentry planning before people are released. Formerly incarcerated students with disabilities have been also able to use its support to pay for college. But it’s unusual for the agency to be working with individuals who might still have a long time to serve.
Last year, counselors may have determined that some incarcerated individuals in the first cohort were eligible for services based on limited information, Rutledge said.
“There are some instances last year where the counselor who made the determination wasn't aware that there was no possibility of parole,” Erlichman added.
Erlichman stressed that there hasn’t been a change in criteria and there is no Department of Rehabilitation policy against funding people who have life sentences. He said they will work with individuals in the first cohort who had been determined eligible for support in error.
“We're not going to pull [funding] right away, but we really have to look at those again on a case-by-case basis,” Erlichman said.
The case for postgraduate opportunities in prison
Just because someone doesn’t have a release date or has a life without parole sentence doesn’t mean that they won’t ever get out of prison. “Parole dates are moving targets,” said Matt Luckett, director of the Cal State Dominguez Hills master’s program.
People are often released early through clemency or state legislative reforms that allow them to be resentenced, and precluding them from services that support education means that they are less likely to be able to support themselves if they are released. Twenty-one students who were in the first three cohorts of the Cal State LA bachelor’s program at Lancaster — many of whom thought they’d never be going home — have gotten out.
“We want to give them every chance to be as prepared as they can be to get a job if they do get out,” Luckett said.
Even if they never get out of prison, lifers often become mentors and tutors to younger individuals inside. Sometimes they even start education programs.
Master’s student Dortell Williams, who is a Cal State LA grad serving life without parole, said that people serving extreme sentences are often excluded from rehabilitative programs despite the ways they can benefit their communities.
“We are expected to die in prison. And while that outcome is a real possibility, the irony is that our permanence in prison is used by the guards as a stabilizing influence on rowdy youth and people sojourning through the system,” he said. “We mentor, peer instruct, quell violence and lead people in the right direction. Education helps us shape a safer environment inside for our peers and staff, and helps us keep the youth in our families and communities from coming to prison at all.”
Kunlyna Tauch, another Cal State LA graduate at Lancaster who was accepted to the master’s program, said that seeing peers earn a degree – particularly a master’s – can change a prison’s entire culture.
“Consider the wider implication of what graduate-level education can mean to a community of people that don't think they are worth it,” said Tauch, who will be released in October. “When one person achieves something, the entire population experiences that accomplishment.”
The need for broader investment
As graduate students, individuals enrolled in the Cal State Dominguez Hills program are not allowed to take out federal student loans and are not eligible for federal financial aid such as the newly reinstated Pell Grants. Most students are unable to cover costs themselves.
All costs for the Cal State Dominguez Hills master’s program — estimated to be between $12,000-15,000 for the two years — have to be covered by tuition and fees. The program doesn’t receive any direct funding from the university or the corrections department.
Luckett said it was never the intention for the master’s program to rely solely on funding from the Department of Rehabilitation. In the short term, individual students are applying to scholarships and Luckett is looking at alternative sources of funding such as a GoFundMe campaign. But, he says, with hundreds more graduates expected from prison bachelor’s programs over the next several years, there needs to be broader investment in postgraduate opportunities in California from both public agencies and philanthropic organizations. “The whole point of building this ecosystem is making sure it’s sustainable,” Luckett said.
A representative for the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation said that over the past few years the department has worked with Cal State Dominguez Hills to explore options for tuition and will continue to support graduate opportunities. “Just as for students in the community, it is a challenge to find financial support for the master's degree,” the spokesperson said. “Although DOR's policy clarification is a hurdle, it is not the end of the program or of CDCR's commitment to the program.”
Charlotte West is a reporter covering the future of postsecondary education in prisons for Open Campus, a nonprofit newsroom focused on higher education. Sign up for her newsletter, College Inside.
