Tuesday, August 4, 2026 - We’ve been wondering how prison education programs have grown since the reinstatement of Pell grants for incarcerated learners a couple of years ago. So we sent our producer Jeff Young to learn more. It turns out colleges wanting to set up programs face complicated logistics and cultural challenges. To help, several states have recently set up statewide consortiums to help. On this episode we hear from the director of a new program in Minnesota building a playbook for colleges hoping to serve incarcerated students. This episode is made with support from Ascendium Education Group.
Get notified about special content and events.
0:00 - Intro
2:06 - A New Statewide Coalition
3:08 - How Financial Aid Rules Changed In 2023
5:27 - Prison Education Programs Need a Range of Resources
6:40 - Have College Prison Programs Expanded In Recent Years?
7:28 - Colleges Don’t Know Where to Start With Prison Programs
8:32 - What Is the Model for Minnesota’s New Prison Education Consortium?
10:40 - What Professors Need to Know About Teaching in Prison
12:24 - A Guidebook for Prison Education Programs
13:50 - A Student’s Perspective on Higher Ed in Prison
20:40 - The Importance of Learning While in Prison
23:15 - How a Prison Program Changed a Student’s Outlook
24:48 - A Student’s Advice for Professors Teaching in Prison
26:05 - Sponsor Break
26:24 - Online v. In-Person Prison Education Programs
29:29 - When Students Take Ownership of Prison Education Programs
32:17 - Cultural Factors of Setting Up Programs in Prison
33:47 - Technology Needed for Prison Education Programs
35:55 - A Student’s Perspective on Edtech in Prison
39:42 - What’s the Policy Outlook for Prison Education?
41:52 - An Argument for Non-Credit Programs in Prisons
44:51 - What’s the Future for Prison Education?
48:46 - Improving Re-entry Support
“Reinstating Pell Grants in Prisons Moves Slowly After 26-Year Ban,” in Inside Higher Ed.
“State Coalitions Emerge as Key Infrastructure for Higher Education in Prison,” in Open Campus.
“Advancing Opportunities for Higher Learning: An Evaluation of Minnesota's New Higher Education in Prison Programs,” by the U of Minnesota’s Center for Urban & Regional Affairs.
Check out our previous episodes on the topic: “‘College Unbound’ from the Traditional Model” from 2024 and “College in Prison” from 2022.
Michael Horn
Welcome to Future U.
I'm Michael Horn.
Ever since the reinstatement of Pell Grants for incarcerated learners, Jeff Selingo and I have been curious to see just how prison education programs will reemerge. It's a topic that we have, of course, covered a few times on the podcast.
And today, on this bonus episode of Future U, our producer Jeff Young is taking you inside one of the emerging trends in prison education.
That trend is the growth of statewide coalitions to support prison education efforts to help with the many complicated logistics of setting up education programs in prisons. Without solving these challenges, it's unclear the ultimate impact of the restoration of the Pell Grant for incarcerated students.
So we send our producer Jeff Young to one of the newest of these statewide coalitions, which started this year in Minnesota. It's called the Minnesota Consortium for Higher Education in Prison.
Jeff has a fascinating conversation here that digs into all sorts of strands and unearths many insights. One that I will be taking away is how, right now, outside of this prison education, many people, as we know, are questioning the value of the degree or the power of the credential or its signaling power in today's economy.
But what the incarcerated students taking college courses perhaps most value is just that the actual courses themselves and the actual learning that they get from them.
The credential, of course, is a wonderful signal. It's a wonderful validator, but the intrinsic opportunity to dig into interesting subject matter and relate it to their own lives is something worth doing?
Over to you, Jeff.
Jeff Young
Thanks, Michael.
I'm Jeff Young, and I usually work behind the scenes here at Future U as a producer. But as Michael said, for this bonus episode, Jeff and Michael sent me on a mission to find out the latest in how colleges are serving students in prison.
I visited Minneapolis College, a thriving community college right in the heart of downtown Minneapolis. That's the site of a new statewide program called the Minnesota Consortium of Higher Education in Prison. I was excited to sit down with the head of this new group.
Michael Valesano
My name is Mike Valesano. I'm the executive director of the Minnesota Consortium for Higher Education in Prison.
Jeff Young
And Michael brought along a colleague who has experienced these programs firsthand when he was an incarcerated student.
Andre Anderson
My name is Andre Anderson, and I'm a reentry coordinator for the TREC program, which stands for Transformation and Reentry Through Education and Community.
Jeff Young
This program is so new that the offices are actually still being set up. So we met in the break room of a temporary office space.
I wanted to start with a rule change. You know, just a couple of years ago, we saw this major federal rule change that you know potentially had a big impact for how education programs that colleges run in prisons operate or can operate. And for decades, incarcerated people were banned from receiving Pell grants. It was like a long time — there were like 20 years where it was not allowed at all.
And then during the Obama administration, there was a pilot program, and so it was like you know. But only in 2023 was that ban lifted, and so federal financial aid could flow again to students who are incarcerated. And this is potentially opening access to hundreds of thousands of folks to study around the country.
So I guess the one thing is to check in on this, and then sort of what has happened since 2023 and that rule change taking effect, you know, has there been an expansion in how many colleges are offering programs in prisons, or at least the number of students maybe in existing programs that are that are actually getting education?
Michael Valesano
Yeah, that's a great question.
And just to tie back to the history, you're exactly right. In between the ‘60s and 1994, college inside of prisons was robust across the country. There was hundreds of programs. In 1994, overnight, it was taken away with the signing of a single crime bill through the Clinton and Biden administration.
In 2015, Obama launched a Second Chance Pilot Program, where higher ed institutions could apply to be a Second Chance Pell program, have their incarcerated students draw down Pell to pay for tuition. But you had to apply for that program, so it wasn't accessible.
And then you're right, July of 2023, full Pell implementation. So now, higher education institutions across the country can apply to be what we call a PEP prison education program to then have their students draw down Pell to pay for tuition.
And this is a new era. This is a new wave of higher education in prison, and it's really about scarcity and resources and the opportunity and availability for incarcerated people to be able to pay for college.
Jeff Young
One thing that Michael Valesano stressed over and over as we talked was that serving students in prison needs to involve a broad set of resources. Just like when a student goes to a campus, there's more than just what happens in the classroom.
Michael Valesano
Higher education in prison is not just about the classroom. It's not just about degree-bearing classrooms. It's not just about obtaining that degree. It's about everything that comes with being in higher education. That student culture, right?
Like higher education, you know, taking classes and getting that degree changes our resume and it opens doors for us. But being a part of student culture, sitting in an economics class or sociology class, and having critical inquiry with peers that changes identity. That changed me being in those classrooms.
My degree opened new pathways for me, absolutely. But the experience of being in higher education and being in student life and clubs and advising and rigorous research that changed my identity.
And so that's what we're looking to bring inside of prison, not just classes, full colleges, full college experiences, and full student cultures.
Jeff Young
And has it opened up the gates? Have a lot of colleges set up programs, or what is the you know what is the landscape today?
Michael Valesano
I think a lot of people think once full PEP implementation happened in July of 2023, the floodgates would open and colleges would rush in. Yeah, that's not necessarily what we're seeing.
Certainly, new colleges have entered the field, but there there's barriers there. There's technical barriers that have to do with the application process getting approved both locally through the DOC or the BOP. DOC is the Department of Corrections. BOP is the Bureau of Prisons, state or federal prisons, and then there's bureaucratic barriers with the Department of Education filling out the PEP application.
Jeff Young
Right? So it's open, but it still takes some approval and and red tape.
Michael Valesano
And even beyond those technical barriers, it's more about that colleges don't know where to start this work.
Yeah, and it's it's it's taken us years. It's taken some programs decades to figure out best practices on how to do financial aid on the inside, or how to do advising, or how to do any of the core student services inside of a prison. It's extremely difficult.
And so when a new college wants to get into this work and in that PEP application, or they have to think through critically how they're going to offer their whole campus on the inside. It's a lot to work through, and that's a big part of why we we we decided as a state to develop MCHEP, the Minnesota Consortium for Higher Education in Prison, to cut down on some of those redundancies, to cut down some of those barriers to entry, as well as of a lot of other reasons.
But with this new wave of PEP and Pell coming in, it seemed like an opportune time to create a statewide ecosystem to help expand rigorous access to higher education prison across Minnesota.
Jeff Young
That's great.
I wanted to ask you about the model. So this new effort in Minnesota you referenced is you know this consortium for higher education to support higher education in prison. So, what does it do? You know, what are your plans as you're starting out here?
What are the kinds of things that colleges typically need and that you hope to sort of solve for them?
Michael Valesano
Yeah, and there's quite a few things, but I think at the epicenter of MCHEP and higher education in prison has been going on even before Pell restoration began. There's been, and I want to say that there's been colleges and universities in this work. It's been smaller programs, not always leading to degrees, but that's just based on resources.
But after the second era of Second Chance Pell has hit Minnesota, Minnesota's you know they've taken that opportunity and ran with it. These programs, scholars serving time in Mankato, the TREC program at Minneapolis College in Metro State, the paralegal program at North Hennepin, Pine Tech's business essential certificate.
These are programs that have taken that opportunity, blood, sweat, and tears, have built out of nothing, have have run into every obstacle possible and still grown to be a real a real national model in a lot of ways, and so what we've seen over this this new wave this past five years is every program is building individually and they're recreating the wheel at every program every program. To figure out their own way how to do FAFSA on the inside.
Jeff Young
Yeah, this financial aid form. How do you get the information to people incarcerated to get them the information?
Michael Valesano
Right. Yeah, where you need critical information that incarcerated people don't always have access to tax returns, etc. It's a paper form. It's complex.
And so, how can we build a system? How can we build an ecosystem across the state where not you know we don't have to recreate the wheel every time? We reduce labor, we reduce redundancies, and we create a system where we speak to each other, we collaborate, we share best practices.
And I think at the very epicenter of MCHEP, that's what we do among other things.
Jeff Young
One thing this new consortium plans to offer is training for professors who might teach in a program for incarcerated students. So I was curious to hear what's a key thing that these trainings convey.
Basically, what is a misperception that a lot of professors might have coming into this work?
Michael Valesano
I think it's really easy to go inside of a prison and to step outside of your teacher lane, even even waver outside of that, and that can be that can be you know, our faculty, our teachers, they need to be the best absolute teachers and faculty members they can, and that's it.
We're not there to be friends. We're not there to be advocates. We're not. We're not there to be a therapist. We all need faculty and instructors to come into prison to be the and teach the very best class that you can, and that's it.
Jeff Young
Right. And not starring in some movie to help like some other social issue that's involved, or or some bigger thing.
Michael Valesano
Exactly, exactly. And whatever, you know, principles and beliefs you have, like hold those, but this isn't this is not the space for them either. This is where we need to teach, and we need to teach really well.
Jeff Young
I mean, so it sounds like that's referencing an issue that has come up in the past. Without naming any names, is that something … are there people who go out of their lanes in the past or is that an issue?
Michael Valesano
No, I would just say more broadly, like it's really easy to do that coming into a prison, being sympathetic towards people's situations, wanting growth and rehabilitation, and the way we do that is through higher education.
The way we do that is through teaching.
Jeff Young
What else do you think it'll take for more colleges around the country? Maybe if they're not in Minnesota and don't get your support, to get involved. Like, what are some other things you would like to see?
Michael Valesano
Right now, we're working to create like a handbook, a guidebook, kind of a 101. This is how you become a PEP institution. These are the things you need to consider early on. These are the questions you need to ask: administration, finance, and operations, admissions, financial aid. These are the kind of bureaucratic questions you need to ask, and also these are like the mission-centric questions you need to ask.
Like, is this our work? Are we committed to it for the long haul because the last thing we need is an institution coming into this work, delivering higher education for a semester, a year, a couple years, and then coming back out and then saying, you know, that that didn't work for us.
So, as much work up front as we can do to make sure the commitment, the mission alignment is there, so that we build sustainable programs is is super important, and so back to the you know creating a robust guide for higher education institutions and their staff and their leadership to go through really comprehensively
Jeff Young
To make sure this is something we can do and this is something we want to do again just for sustainability and viability for programs.
It gets back to that point you raised earlier of not knowing where to start, so to get a starting place, so that people can sort of like sit back and answer these questions before they jump in.
I wanted to bring Andre Anderson in here because he is not only aware of what's happening currently through his role in the transformation and reentry through education and community program or trek, he was once an incarcerated student himself.
I'm really interested in the student perspective here, and somebody who, and I saw you nod your head a couple times. So love to get your views.
I mean, first off, what are the, you know, when you were participating in this? Like, could you kind of set the scene of what it's like because you know people may not understand. Like you know, was it you know what was a typical class session like for you and and yeah, sort of show us take us there.
Andre Anderson
Yeah, thank you again for having me here today, and I echo everything Mike was saying.
For me, prison is often defined by such a lack of opportunity, lack of opportunity to do things, to do something with your time, to make an impact.
And back in 2021, when the TREC program, before it was named, before it was a program, when faculty came in to tour our prison and to tell us about this program. It felt exciting from day one, and so I think just the hope that things are finally changing in prison.
I advocated for prison reform and appeals, and fought all these systems forever, thinking that prison reform would come in the form of an earlier outdated or some better living conditions.
And over time, I realized prison reform is going to come through education, and this belief that I think is is center to the work is education is a basic human right, and if it is a basic human right, then it is incumbent upon the people who have the ability to do something to bring it to the people that it's not accessible to.
So that is kind of the underlining current that pushed our program that Minneapolis College jumped on early, and I got involved.
I already had an AA degree before I came to prison. I was a senior in mechanical engineering, and I came to prison. But I wanted so desperately to be a part of this that I started over. I started over taking English comp again, taking ethics, taking all the classes, earned my AA, my BA, and now transitioned to grad school.
Completely different plan than I ever thought in my life. But again, college in prison came in and it gave me an opportunity. It didn't tell me what my next goals were. It didn't tell me what I should focus on or what should I do with this new knowledge. But it gave me the ability to think, to think critically, to entertain ideas that were very foreign than my core beliefs, and to examine those.
And so, the opportunity was learning. It's okay to be a lifelong learner. Having a growth mindset is an asset that you can develop and learn. And those things really came through. And then also the question I think I wrestled with so much through school was, "What does it mean to be educated?”
And for me, it was that piece of paper, that degree, that 4.0, those recognitions. That's what education meant.
And I think through the TREC program, I realized no, education is relational and it's based in community and place. So when you put those defining characteristics on education, it looks very different.
And so as we go through, as we're going through these programs, I think those are the through lines that building community, building space where people feel they can explore ideas, they can write papers. They can get feedback. They can talk on the way to the child line on ethics and debate back and forth what they're going to write their paper on. Those moments, that's the bigger picture.
And we're using education as a vehicle. There's other vehicles. There's therapy. There's treatment. There's all sorts of programming. And our lane is give somebody an education, open up their horizons. Don't foreclose on their opportunities by a single trade program that teaches you how to do one thing, which is good and it serves a population.
But what about if you gave a person like me on the inside an opportunity and believed in them?
And one of my professors in the TREC program sent me an email on my prison tablet, and I was getting ready for my capstone project. And she said, "You have what it takes to get a PhD someday, Andre.”
And I still remember sitting in a prison cell during COVID lockdowns, no opportunities. That little comment that came through on a prison tablet that was using for school changed the whole direction of my life. And giving opportunities where every interaction in prison is me and the officer, me and a caseworker, me and and it's this huge power dynamic, this formal setting.
There's certain things you can and can't talk about. You get in a classroom, things open up. My future, what I want to do with my life, where I want to go.
Those conversations open up in a way that they're never opened up in prison.
You know, in prison, what did you do? When did you get here? What's your out date? Like, other than those like pieces of information, they don't care.
And when it's, you know, what is the right thing to do in this situation? Looking at ethics. What is a way we can organize a community and community leadership class. What you know, these questions aren't the rudimentary basic needs. They are, you know, how do I live a good life? How do I do something different?
And I think the two things that were cultivated in me at the end that I brought with me is to succeed, a person only needs two things: they need belonging, and they need purpose.
And for me, I found belonging in my education community and my reentry community, and I found purpose with the freedom to explore what you want. Yes, we have a capstone. Yes, you have a 20-page paper to write. What do you want to do it on?
Like those questions, not scripted. Not we're all going to write on the American Dream. We're all going to write on you know this or that. These traditional check a box. It's what's important to you, you know.
And so for me, that's kind of what college in prison felt like. Yes, the constraints of getting to school, the constraints of all the DLC stuff, but that's just noise. That's noise to say, you know, we're working hard to accommodate.
But look at all these things, and it's just like Mike mentioned earlier. This space can become so political, and though we don't like it or subscribe to it, we operate in the system.
So to see this program grow, we're in a lane, and I think we're finding our lane. I think Minshep is setting some goalposts a couple miles down the road, and we're trying to follow that.
But in the work, it's just showing up. It's relational. It's gritty. But it's so worth it.
It's so worth it.
And that's just kind of what I want to share on that part.
Jeff Young
I'm so glad you did. And you know, it's interesting to me that the kind of things that I was kind of curious about is like, what does it look like? What does it? You're almost like, who cares?
Like you were having ideas, you were like having these debates, and it was taking you to a sort of a mind space that you didn't have in other parts of your daily life. Is that fair to say?
Andre Anderson
I think that's incredibly fair to say. It's a weird paradigm because, you know, I'm over at the university or I'm at that thing. What am I thinking in my head? Who is your professor? What are the students you're studying with and all that stuff, I say, hey, I'm studying in prison. Man, do they let you have paper? What do the conditions look like?
They care solely on the condition, and and like, what does it actually look like? It's a classroom with posters on the wall with a professor up there reading college textbooks, writing papers. It's it's college. What do you mean? You know, and so when we make a fetish out of the hardship of prison or the blood, and the gore, and the politics, and we do that.
We reduce the student's experience to be a student first, and then if they want to accept the TREC identity or these other things that we're giving to help, they can. But they can be a Minneapolis College student all the way through. Don't have to associate with a title.
But we have something, and we're building something. But they're students first. They're students.
And I think when you can look at that, and how we ask questions about this space, are we asking?
We want to know logistics of how does it work? How do teachers come through security? How do you know? How do the nuts and bolts of the program work?
It's complicated. You know, what is the impact? It's changing lives. It's exciting.
There's some real leaders that are being developed in prison right now that are come out and shine in the space. There's work for graduate programs and PhD programs while inside, you know, right away. Two-year degree program is all we could think of. That would be such a huge deal to actually have that. And then four-year degree program, and then like maybe we could do a master's.
And so as our students grow, being adaptive, where we have grad programs, we have internships, we have high impact learning opportunities, whether it's clubs, whether it's research clusters, and we build out those things for the student experience, and and to do that, I think you have to have a shift of academic knowledge production can and does get produced in prison.
Now, how does that fit into the greater body of academia is a question still we're looking at, but students inside create things equal value to students out here, and they're so hard to have a conversation.
You can't get published. You can't get out. I can't share, and there's this wall, and I think it's upon us who have been on the other side of the wall, who care about what's going on on the other side of the wall to help those channels.
And when those students' voices can be at the conversation, when they can be at the table, when decisions are made about their lives or their programming, then I think we can build something that's really going to last.
Jeff Young
I want to follow up on one other thing you mentioned, which is that you know these sort of … you were thinking of other ways to change systems and reform prison and sort of society, but now you're really focused on education as actually stirring a role there. It sounds like you've sort of had a change of mind on that.
What do you mean by that?
And what tell me a little bit more about what you mean?
Andre Anderson
Yeah, I've always imagined higher education as a privilege. You work really hard in high school. You work really hard to prepare yourself. And college isn't meant for everyone. It's meant for people that have a purpose, that have means, that have all these things. Just these underlying. …
Jeff Young
You were doing it before. Yeah,
Andre Anderson
I was doing it before.
My father's a retired architect. My uncle's electrical engineer. I'm going to be one of these two professionals, and like that's my lot in life, and that's what I went.
And then to relook at that, and being a non traditional student isn't a ding on who I am. It just means that I'm a person that comes with a ton of life experience and seeking to learn more.
So I think for me, I realized that we're all people. We can all end up in prison. There's you know, and it should be open to all.
And then, so that really, I had that shift of like this is a special thing, and you got to be really good to be able to have access to it. To man, what if we open this up to everyone? Think what could happen. What if we stopped treating education as a commodity, something to barter for, and something as you share?
And if education is a model of sharing knowledge, and this is a vehicle we can share knowledge with people who are traditionally excluded. I think we serve the mission.
Jeff Young
And one more question for you at this point is: What advice would you have for, you know, maybe a college leader out here who's listening to this, or a professor who might be, you know, about to do work in a program in prison?
What advice would you have for them?
Andre Anderson
You know, I think checking that motive. You know, if your motive is to help people, to make the world a better place, to have an impact, there's plenty of room, and we need you. If it's just to see what the space is and kind of come through on a tour and check it out, but with no plan of staying, just be careful.
You can do a lot of damage coming in, making promises, and leaving. So if you're committed to this and you want to, it's a long haul work.
I would say there's 10 times more setbacks and failures than there are successes. I try not to focus on, you know, the agony of doing time in prison, but those come with it.
So you just have to be aware of the commitment, but the reward being on either side of it far outweighs the stress that we have to deal with in this space.
Jeff Young
So, what are some key questions for colleges to consider when thinking about setting up a prison education program? And are colleges mostly offering these programs online or in person.
We get to all that right after this short break.
Sponsor
This episode of Future U is sponsored by Ascendium, a mission-driven nonprofit committed to improving learning and training systems to better serve learners from low-income backgrounds.
For more information, visit Ascendiumphilanthropy.org.
Jeff Young
Michael. I wanted to go back to you for a minute and back to the playbook because there are some things there… And not to get too into the details of sort of the and not in a way of like what's the movie look like. But you know as you mentioned this playbook that there are important factors to consider if a college wants to get serious about this and decides it does fit their mission.
One thing that I think a lot of people might think is like, ‘Oh, well, there's online programs that might be easy to do.’ Or I hear a lot of examples and read a lot about you know the classroom, just like any classroom and in-person setting that that is what a lot of people end up doing.
So walk us through this. Are these both options college can consider? Is one better or the other — in-person, online. What are the realities there?
Michael Valesano
Yeah it's a great question.
I would answer it first super succinctly that it's a both-and. There is room for online education, and there is room for in person education in higher education in prison.
I always lead with in-person education. Full time in person education is the gold standard. It is the best practice. You know, higher education in general across the country, not just inside of prisons, has gone to a very online modality, particularly post COVID. Yeah, and and you know, there's a lot of research out there that shows the importance of online education, particularly for non-traditional learners, adult learners who have heavy responsibilities outside of the classroom.
Jeff Young
It's an access thing for when it's used in a lot of ways for you know on the outside here.
Michael Valesano
Yeah, I think one of the best parts online education brings on the outside is going to be related to access.
However, when we're when an institution is programming within a prison, I cannot stress enough how important it is to hold space to be you know, and you're dead right that it's a lot harder to run an in-person program.
It's a lot harder to send an advisor out to a prison that's an hour away three times a week. A faculty member drive an hour down to Fairview. They'll sit in the lobby for 45 minutes. They'll go through security, metal detector, wand, the whole thing. Walk across the yard for 15 minutes, wait for their students, and then drive home. Do the whole thing on the way back.
It's a huge commitment, and there's resources that need to be put forward for that to happen.
But it is absolutely worth it.
The impact we hear time and time and time again from students about how much it means for us to show up, to hold space in the classroom, a study hall, an advising session, and it's yeah,
it's paramount to the work that we lead with in-person education, and there's room for supplementation of online programming.
You know, here in Minnesota, we have an online paralegal program, and we have an online JD program. Super unique programs, awesome programs. Really, like the first place in the country this is happening this spring.
We had our first two JD graduates in the whole country, like these are two soon-to-be attorneys. We're going to take the bar exam, like so exciting. That's an online modality because that's the only way that that could work, and so there is room for that.
But I think we all need to lead with in person education.
If I could, you know. After Andre spoke, I was just struck by something, and really everything he said, and I just wanted to acknowledge how these programs were built by our students.
We came in with an idea that might have been right or wrong, and we came in with an opportunity, and incarcerated people and our students grabbed hold of that opportunity, held it tightly as sacred, and helped build our programs at every single step. They made our jobs easier.
What we noticed is, you know, what we were so surprised by, and you know wrongfully so, was Was how grateful and how much that opportunity meant to them that they that they were willing to do anything to to hold on to that and the amount of sacrifice that our students Andre and others have gone through to to see this through.
I mean, Andre started with paper and pencil in a single classroom with like 10 students, not knowing what was going to happen. And the amount of time he and his colleagues put forward-not just to the classwork, but thinking about how we can expand this program and how this program will never go away-is is absolutely remarkable.
Our students are brilliant; they care about this work, both like for their peers.
We hear that time and time again. It's like, ‘I want this. I want to build this and sustain this and grow our roots so the person coming behind me is going to have that opportunity. One and two, because I care about my community on the outside.’ And I know I'm going to be better, and I can better serve my family and my community and my state and get into the workforce when I come home.
It's these selfless reasons that was astonishing to us, and the amount of ownership that our students took hold of it and made our jobs easy, and is really the catalyst for a lot of the programs across the state.
Jeff Young
It gets back to what Andre said about purpose, right? And that the students are there actually thinking of themselves as like advocates to keep it going, and not just their own education, which is also important.
Michael Valesano
Absolutely, yeah.
Jeff Young
Now I wondered about some cultural factors that do come up, and people are working into the space. Like, I wonder if there's some things that you could, you know, what would your handbook say that people should know as they think about entering creating a prison education program.
Michael Valesano
I think possibly the most key thing is that the Department of Corrections is our partner. They are a partner in every step of the way.
These are their buildings. This is their space. This is their staff. Some of their staff have been working there for 40 years. And what does it mean for us to come into that space where we have you know our own institutional agenda?
We have our own priorities. But we need to realize that we're coming into someone else's space, and this is a partnership.
And we've been lucky enough in Minnesota to have an extremely agreeable Department of Corrections that has partnered with us every step of the way. And in a lot of ways, like we have a shared mission. Like they want to expand higher education in prison across the state. We do too.
And so I would say that's super key for institutions coming in. Lean on that partnership with the Department of Corrections. You know, it before you do, always ask. You know, talk about the intricacies because there's always going to be something that we're not considering because that's not our realm.
We do higher education. They do safety and security. And the only way we can make this happen is together.
Jeff Young
And what about the technology issues?
Because it's not like you know, if you're in a prison, you're not just gonna. And I ask you both: like, you can't just go on the internet anytime you want. There's issues around you know what kind of devices you can have. Is there any sort of high-level thoughts for a college starting a prison education program that they should know, or or and what the barriers still are, maybe in this space with technology?
Michael Valesano
Yeah, I would say for new programs entering the space, be comfortable with pencil and paper, and anything you get above that is frosting on the cake.
And you know we've been lucky enough. The Department of Corrections really shortly after our inception, and in 2020 or 2021, they gave tablets really across the state to all higher education prison students. So they have a small tablet with an attached keyboard. It's not Wi-Fi accessible. It's a closed local area network where you know D2L or Canvas or whatever LMS the institution uses uploaded. There's 24/7 messaging access between students, professors, advisors, and the institution.
Jeff Young
So you got to that point. It wasn't on day one. It was building that up?
Michael Valesano
No, to the DOC's credit, like it was day two.
We didn't start there, but like pretty quickly, we we went to tablets, and you know now both of our visions are set higher than that.
Like we want expanded technology access, and also we know that can go away at the drop of the hat if something happens. Tablets can get taken away.
And so that's why I say, like, be comfortable. Make sure that you can do paper and pencil, and that should always be like something that you can stand up if needed.
And so it's you know it it's a bit of a love hate thing with technology. It creates so much opportunity and access to libraries and repositories and communication access, but also if you're too reliant on that, you know, then something runs astray.
Jeff Young
You could just derail an education if it's too reliant on it and it gets taken away for some reason?
Michael Valesano
Yeah. Yep.
Jeff Young
Yeah. Andre, what do you think on that issue of technology first? But I'd also be curious on your thoughts on any of these things we've been talking about.
Andre Anderson
Yeah, I think for me, being on the inside, when I seen these little 10-inch tablets come in with the Fort Knox case on them, that was probably 10 pounds. I was hopefully optimistic, and then as they navigated, you know, Wi-Fi to hook them up to, like Mike said the closed network, and it opened up.
To me, it was a huge signal as the students on the inside that this was real. So I think the first initial thing is when I got called down and issued a tablet with a password and some headphones, and I felt like I'm actually in a real program.
So I think for the student side, it gave some legitimacy. Being able to type on a word processor, though it's very basic, like being able to put my thoughts and come back to my thoughts and edit my thoughts and submit a document to a professor and get feedback was vital.
And then all of a sudden, I found EBSCO, which is our search tool that the university uses for academic and scholarly papers and articles, and we could get five requests a week, and the whole world opened up to me that idea of like when you get out of prison and you sit in front of the computer with Google, there's a million things I want to search, and then I got out and I sat in front of it and I couldn't think of one, so like being in prison, like chase down those ideas you have on the inside.
And for myself, I'm a distance runner, so I started looking up every running article on ultra marathons on this. And I found my community in the running world through searching for running articles on EBSCO, doing projects for class.
So it those types of things, technology — as clunky as it was — even having access one hour a day, or only in the education department, or some of the things that they've came up with over the years, it was so transformative that to me.
It's just it felt like a real thing. I could write a real paper, I could submit it, get feedback, I could search. So for me, it just even though I was limited, having access to a library incarcerated is sometimes the only thing you need to do to spur somebody on to explore something or write about it. So for me, it was access.
The physical thing wasn't the big thing for me. You know, then it was just a problem to solve. Like this thing doesn't stand up. So I started using cardboard and packing tape to make holders for the tablets, and other people in the program would see it. Now I have a business making cardboard holders to hold laptops that aren't, you know, something the DLC will take, but it's enough to hold it, you know.
And so for me, it was just this cool new thing. And how do you integrate a tablet into your cell? And how do you organize it? How do you show up in that space? Changed, you know.
Waking up early, nothing to do. The doors are still locked. I can pull out my tablet and start to write.
So for me, it allowed me to access education in a whole new way, while still in my cell, off and on COVID lockdown, still being able to write.
Some of the best works that I ever produced was during those 23-hour-a-day lockdowns when I had a tablet that was charged. Like that gave me so much freedom.
So I think those are the things from a person's side. Whether it's the newest or greatest or this or that, nobody cares. Whether it takes me 10 times to log in, part of the pain. But once you're in, I felt so connected.
And being able to communicate with professors, to ask a follow-up question, ask them for more reading materials. Ask them, you know, what do you know about this topic?
I think it opens up a lane for communication in a unique way. That even being out in the world, yeah, I email my professors, but it's not the same as like the professors I connected to and worked with while I was on the inside because it was just a different space.
Jeff Young
I did want to ask a little bit about you know the policy realm, and as much as you can talk about it.
You know, it was the first Trump administration that lifted the ban on Pell grants for incarcerated students. But in this administration we've seen proposals to cut back Pell programs in general, and to cut education department staff.
You mentioned there's needs to get things approved in the education department, just in general for these you know policies.
Have you seen any recent moves in this second Trump administration that are slowing down this access to education programs in prison? And what is your outlook overall in this in the policy realm?
Michael Valesano
It's a good question.
You know I'm probably going to disappoint with my answer, saying that I don't have a lot of answers there.
I will say that, you know, Pell, the restoration of it, and then the potential cutting of it is a topic within the field. Yeah, it's a very real thing.
I'll also say that you know, particularly higher education in prison. Obviously, there's not a lot of things in today's world where both sides of the aisle agree that something is good. And I think higher education in prison is one of those things.
Both sides of the political aisle agree that higher education is good. It's good for our state. It's good for our workforce. It's good for our budget. It's good for our communities.
Now they might disagree on like particularly why it's good or the benefits of it or why it's needed, but I think politically, higher education in prison is on solid footing. And it it is a bit protected.
Pell in general, again, it's it's very hard for me to say. I know there's poor folks, low-socioeconomic folks, who utilize Pell on both sides of the aisle, and Pell is a lifeline for hundreds of thousands of people in our country. And I think it would be a devastation to see any sort of cut to it, whether within prison or outside.
Jeff Young
Sure,
Michael Valesano
I will say that the way that higher education and prison programs can hedge against that possibility is to think deeply and robustly about non credit bearing opportunities.
So opportunities inside of a prison that aren't tied to credits aren't tied to tuition.
Jeff Young
Why is that?
Michael Valesano
Because you don't have to draw down Pell. So if Pell went away tomorrow, non-credit opportunities, things like research clusters or or or book talks or book studies, or or any other form of learning and gathering and community around education or academia on the inside can still exist, even because there is no tuition model there. That it's not for credit.
And some of the programs across the state have thought really robustly about that and have done that really well. Metro State University is one of those. They have been at the cutting edge of thinking about non credit possibilities, and I think it's brilliant, and it hedges against the possibility of Pell going away one day again, where we can still have higher education inside of prisons even without Pell.
Jeff Young
How do you fund those kinds of activities you mentioned?
Michael Valesano
You know, through a variety [of ways].
You know, when Pell was cut, you know, we saw the programs that did exist were either largely volunteer-based, so they didn't have a huge cost associated with them, or they were like large, large endowed institutions that had philanthropic funding.
So one is, you know, one way to fund that is philanthropic funding.
Another way to fund that is to cut down on the institutional costs associated with the program, and then find folks and and and and pathways, creativity, and innovation to be able to offer these things where they aren't going to cost hundreds of thousands of dollars.
Again, it's not ideal, and you know as much as I'm talking about non-degree coursework, credits are important, degrees are important, and I never want to say they're not. That's absolutely vital.
But at the end of the day, if we ever were to cross that bridge, we need to hedge. We need to create securities to make sure that higher education in prison will still exist with or without Pell.
Jeff Young
It's almost like the answer around technology, too. It's like, the best thing that you really want can't be the only thing. You want to have other contingencies depending on what happens in the larger environment.
Michael Valesano
Absolutely, and it's also a part of that student culture we were talking about earlier.
It's not just the classroom; it's all of these other opportunities that folks get being a student that makes that makes the difference. And so those are non-credit opportunities, and those are such a vital part about being a student.
Jeff Young
And I guess the last question for both of you is, what is your outlook?
Where do you see things going in the next five years in this space?
Andre Anderson
Yeah, thank you for that question.
I think you always have to, you know, live in the moment and do what you can today. But where are we trying to go is something that I think animates our work, and at least in in my role, working with students as they transition, working with higher education institutions as they train professors and and sharing with them, and doing the work I can out here to try to help the current program be its best I think is issue one or the thing that I'm focused on the most now.
But if we could say we can grow and we don't have to look at barriers. Like what are these other opportunities?
I mean, for me, it would instantly be real graduate work opportunities for people on the inside.
I would also be an ethical model that we would have to use students on the inside to conduct research and also be part of research studies as we're growing and to figure out IRB approval, DOC approval, and how does it work so we can actually conduct research in prison I think is something that I would like to see happen in the next few years.
And then maybe even as bold as some other states have went, where they've had students who have went through their program, got a degree, and then they hire them on as either teachers or teaching assistants to help in the school process, so they can stay involved. So, like having graduates be tutors, having them be teaching assistants, having them be research assistants, having a thing so someone can go through, get a degree and maybe they have 10 years left on their sentence. We don't just put them to the side, but we utilize that talent that we just trained up in prison to help others.
So I think when we can get to a space where students can go through pre-degree, degree, and post-degree, and have meaningful ways to engage, then I think that'll be the mark. Whether that's 1,000 people or 200 people in prison, I think the number is something we strive for. But I'd rather have 100 really high-impact opportunities than 1,000 mediocre experiences.
So just always balancing that, that we don't grow too fast where we can't hold up to what we've committed to offering to these students.
So I think it's not a growth thing that I see in the future, but it's a quality of our interactions continue to be sustainable and continue to be paramount to the work that we're doing.
Jeff Young
Great.
And Michael, how about you?
Michael Valesano
Yeah, I mean, I'll start where where Andre ended because that's absolutely critical. Like, yes, we need expanded access in in all prisons in the state of we need expanded access. There is, you know, we we we've been through times where we've had hundreds, 200 incarcerated people on our wait list to get into our program. The desire is strong in the prisons and and institutions and the Department of Corrections needs to continue to work to think about growth and expansion,
But that cannot come at the detriment of quality. Like we cannot turn into an all online open access higher education in prison state. Like we need to think hard about quality, about student life, about student culture and community.
So, alongside growth comes that quality component.
And I'll say like, I think one thing about this new wave of higher education post PEP is we're finding that we no longer have to justify that higher education in prison is a good thing. Those conversations have largely gone away, and it's really good to have.
And now we can start focusing on being imaginative, being creative, building programs that are robust, rigorous, and that can last.
So I think that's a huge transition for us and into the future.
You know, one thing we didn't talk about here yet is reentry, like when our students come home and accepted back into the campus community. But you know, just getting the word out there, and I look forward to the day where we say higher education in prison to administrators or colleges or staff members, and it's no longer like a confused look. Like, what are we talking about? I look forward to the day that they're like, yeah, we're we're aware of like we do that work. We're aware of that work going on in the state.
Or when we ask our campuses or leadership at campuses, like, ‘How many justice impacted students do you have on your campus?’ And like, you know, 9 out of 10 times, it's like, ‘Whoa! I've never thought about that.’
And I look forward to the day when we ask that question and the responses. You know, they don't have to give us a number because I'd actually recommend not tracking that. But like, ‘We have a lot of justice-impacted students on our campus, and this is how we support them. We realize this is their barriers upon reentry. This is their barriers to education, either on the inside or outside, and this is how we meet those needs.’
And that's a critical step that I'm looking for in the future.
So one is acknowledgement of the student demographic and the particular barriers that that they face coming home or currently incarcerated and hearing about. Some critical innovations and thoughts into student services or academic offerings in the classrooms about how they adjust and they make space for formerly incarcerated or justice-impacted students.
Jeff Young
That's a great place to leave it. Well, thank you, thank you, Michael, and thank you, Andre, for sharing.
Michael Valesano
Yeah, thank you so much, Jeff.
Jeff Young
Thanks again to Michael Velasano and Andre Anderson.
And thanks to all of you for listening.
Make sure to follow Future U wherever you're listening to podcasts, and leave a rating or review.
Jeff and Michael will be back soon with a new season of Future U.
