College in Prison

Transcript

Jeff Selingo:

When we think about who is a college student, Michael, there's a population that is invisible, I think, to most of us, particularly institutions themselves, and that's people who are in prison.

Michael Horn:

That's in part, Jeff, because for decades incarcerated individuals haven't been eligible for federal aid for college classes. It's also a policy that is about to change in the new year, and so we'll be looking at what that means for the future of higher education on this episode of Future U.

Sponsor:

This episode of Future U is sponsored by Ascendium Education Group, a nonprofit organization committed to helping learners from low-income backgrounds reach their education and career goals. For more information, visit ascendiumphilanthropy.org. Subscribe to Future U wherever you get your podcasts, and if you enjoy the show, share it with your friends so others can discover the conversations we're having about higher education.

Michael Horn:

I'm Michael Horn.

Jeff Selingo:

And I'm Jeff Selingo. Some 1.5 million people are in state and federal prisons in the United States. Up until the mid-1990s, college programs and prisons were much more common than they are today. By one estimate, 9% of the nation's prison population was enrolled in a college course in the early 1980s.

Michael Horn:

That of course all changed in 1994 when as part of a, quote, get tough on crime agenda, the federal government made prisoners ineligible for Pell Grants, which is the primary federal financial aid program for low income students. Almost overnight, college programs in prisons practically disappeared.

Jeff Selingo:

Then in 2016, the Education Department started an experiment allowing some colleges to offer courses in prisons through what was called the Second Chance Pell Program, and then as part of the FAFSA Simplification Act, the government eliminated the ban on incarcerated students receiving Pell Grants, and so beginning on July 1st, 2023, all incarcerated students who are enrolled in eligible prison education programs will once again be eligible for Pell Grants, and that's a big change that has a potential to increase access to higher ed for hundreds of thousands of students and give incarcerated people a second chance.

As a result, there's an opportunity for colleges to launch new programs in prisons. A topic we're going to be discussing on today's podcast with Erin Castro, who's an associate professor of higher education and Associate Dean of Community Engagement and Access at the University of Utah, as well as with Terrell Blount, who is executive director of the nonprofit, Formerly Incarcerated College Graduates Network. Terrell also spent four years as a program associate for the Vera Institute of Justice in New York, working with college programs in prisons in 10 states as part of a federally funded second chance pill program. He also has the lived experience of receiving post-secondary education in a New Jersey prison, completing his degree at Rutgers University following his incarceration. Terrell and Erin, welcome to Future U.

Terrell Blount:

Thank you for having me.

Erin Castro:

Thanks. Excited to be here.

Michael Horn:

So Erin, let's start with you. We mentioned at the top of the show that there are about one and a half million people in state and federal prisons in the United States. I'm curious, what's the potential impact of this change in federal policy on that population? What do you expect to see happen in college enrollments, perhaps from these individuals, and more importantly, what will it mean for them, the individuals themselves, more broadly?

Erin Castro:

Well, that's a big question. I think we're about to see a radical change in the landscape of enrollment for not just incarcerated adults, but incarcerated youth as well, and I think this has been a kind of an upward trajectory in what Pell expansion will do, is it will allow for a federal funding stream that has been out of reach for 25 years. So I think we're going to see many more colleges and universities enter this space. That being said, I always think it's really important to keep in mind that there are a number of people who are not eligible for Pell who are inside prisons, detention centers, jails, and they may not be able to become eligible for Pell, and if they are eligible to become eligible for Pell, it's still a big lift to do so when you're incarcerated.

So what I think we're also going to see, and what we've seen in some preliminary data, is that priority enrollment for post-secondary education is going to Pell-eligible people, and there are a number of reasons that we should be concerned about that. And so I would urge colleges and universities who are interested in getting into this space and doing the work that they have robust funding mechanisms and streams to be able to provide access for all eligible people regardless of their ability to pull federal student aid.

Jeff Selingo:

So Terrell, Erin just mentioned this idea of a big lift and you have actually lived to this experience. So can you describe for our listeners what it was like taking college classes while in prison, and how did that persuade you to earn a degree when you got out?

Terrell Blount:

Yeah, so I would tell folks that, one, when I participated in college courses while incarcerated, it's nowhere near what currently exists in regard to the types of programming, the rigorous curriculum, the staff that take part in the planning, the thought that goes behind the degree offerings for incarcerated learners. That's not what I experienced when I was incarcerated. I participated in an A.A.S program that would've allowed me to get a degree or certificate in small business management, but none of that was explicitly communicated to me. It was a form that came on a tear to sign up for college if you were in fact a high school degree holder, and you needed a certain amount of time off your sentence or a certain amount of time before you were going to be released, and as long as you check those boxes, that was it.

I never met a dean from the college. I never knew staff. Maybe a professor or two might have said hi to me in the hallways afterward, but in today's world of higher ed in prison, it's much deeper than that. It's a lot more planning, thoughtfulness. We're talking about topics like racial equity in the prison classrooms, we're talking about policy and things like that. So I say that to say my experience compared to what's happening right now, we've come a very long way.

Michael Horn:

Let's now shift to talking about what does it take to pull this off and do it well to actually really serve this population correctly, and Terrell, I want to turn to you on this. You mentioned that there's already been a sea change and how institutions are serving this population relative to when you went through that experience, but I'm just sort of curious if you can name the two or three most important considerations in your view and the work you've done in this space, or the factors that college leaders really need to know before they make this commitment to serving students in prison.

Terrell Blount:

Well, I think first and foremost, using human-first language is very important in this space. When you use terms that formally incarcerated or system-impacted people find to be dehumanizing, I think it says, one, your respect about the population, but two, also how you view them. So if you are speaking about your program and how it's transformative and liberating incarcerated people, but instead of incarcerated people, you say inmates or offenders, that's something indicative about how you view the individuals who at the end of the day are really your students. They're students of your college, they're scholars. So that's one thing because that continues to be an issue in this space by institutions that are entering, but they don't know the culture, they don't understand the culture, they're interested only in the practice of teaching people in prison. So that's number one.

Number two, really quickly, I say this continued conversation about equity in all facets. So gender equity, there isn't a reason why the ratio of men's prisons that have programs to women's prisons are completely lopsided. So that's something that's important. Racial equity, we don't want to see people of color and other minorities overpopulating the prison system as a whole, but then underpopulation or underrepresentation in the classroom, and so many other financial equity we're discussing with Pell Grants and making sure that people who don't have access to Pell can still get an education. Equity is number two. Human-first language definitely number one.

Michael Horn:

No, that's great. And Erin, I want to turn to you for your take on this as well because as you know, higher ed has lost 1.3 million students in terms of enrollment during the pandemic, so we know that many institutions, rightly or wrongly, are looking for students in new places, and as a result, many of them are viewing this perhaps as an opportunity for them to serve a new segment of students, but also bolster some real challenges, and so what I want to know is what are the real challenges and hurdles that institutions should be aware of in your view and in your research so that they don't just jump into this space without some true commitment to sticking with it and doing with it well. What are the student support services that they might need to provide, for example, at a time when institutions are properly concerned about not just enrollment, but student success as well?

Erin Castro:

Absolutely. Yes, and I think there's definitely interest convergence right now. I think what I can say confidently from the research is that for institutions that are enrolling a great number of incarcerated people compared to their on-campus, non-incarcerated students, so they're enrolling hundreds, if not thousands, of incarcerated people in classes. What we have not seen is a match in terms of institutional infrastructure support and resources to that enrollment, right? So if you were to enroll an extra thousand students here at the University of Utah, we'd need to be talking in terms of resources. Academic advising, can they absorb it? Career counseling, can they take that on? And we've seen less of those kinds of conversations in this space.

What tends to happen is particularly for institutions that are already on hybrid or kind of online synchronous or asynchronous modules, "Oh, we'll add the incarcerated group as a section in this class," which really you just kind of put the burden on the instructor, but there is no kind of back channel to like, "Well, wait a second. If we're adding 30 students per class, four classes per term, what are the other conversations we need to be having outside of the classroom to ensure that students do have access, particularly around financial aid information?"

We know right now that incarcerated people... I mean, it's not that uncommon to non-incarcerated students. I mean, federal student aid is confusing. Well, imagine if you're inside of a prison and not only can you not access financial aid experts to the institution in which you are enrolled, you can't get a hold of the Department of Education because the 800 number's not on your cleared call list, you have to pay to send postage. So the level of misinformation runs amuck among incarcerated people, and so I would say there's just a huge kind of fiduciary duty on the part of colleges and universities and the staff who want to engage this work well to first and foremost, talk to the students inside, figure out what they're doing, what's available, what do they know, what do they want.

I think oftentimes we kind of look on our end and say, "Okay. Well, we're equipped to offer X pathway," that's great, but we should probably talk with the students inside to see if that's something that they want, and if we're up against some restraints, which we certainly are, where can we come to a middle ground where it's like, "All right, well we can't offer the degree in business, but we could do the certificate in business and do the associate's degree in psychology or something."

Often, to Terrell's point, what we've seen in the data is that students are not given choice inside. They're provided this is college, and whatever the institution decides to provide is what is provided, and I get that we're all under constraints here, but I would to the extent possible for folks looking to do this work well reach out to the facility, have a conversation with the program leaders at that facility, request a meeting with your potential students, get inside, figure out how difficult it is for those students to get to where they need to get to, and start understanding how that facility operates, and then have a conversation about the budget outside of the cost of attendance. And so what is it going to cost the institution to serve each incarcerated student well to the extent... I'm always pushing, we should be pushing for access for incarcerated students to all of the things that non-incarcerated students have access to. So our non-incarcerated students have access to wellness services, they have access to financial planning. So it shouldn't automatically be, "Oh. Well, they're inside of a prison so they can't have access to it." No, we should imagine bigger here and present the prison with, "As enrolled students, here's what they're entitled to help us figure out how to get them this access."

Jeff Selingo:

That's really interesting, Erin and Terrell. I just want to follow up on Michael's question to Erin about student services and particularly those services that non-incarcerated students have access to, and a big one right now in higher education is career services and when institutions are really focused on success after college. So what do institutions need to do to get incarcerated students to not only to graduation, but more than anything, because you've done a lot of work in this area, I know, help them get into the job market after graduation and reenter society? What do colleges need to do there? Because if it's all just about the education piece and not about these other services that non-incarcerated students have access to, particularly career services, I feel like we've failed them then.

Terrell Blount:

No, that's a great question, and I think this is part of that list, right? We asked earlier about the most important considerations, and this definitely is on that list, thinking about not just college completion, but what people are going to be doing post-college, and if you think about the services that are offered on campus or even just the activities or events. Post-incarceration for me, I learned so many professional development or job development skills that had I not been a part of college I probably would've had to be in the reentry program at a nonprofit or something like that in order to receive these job training modules on the interview process, how to dress up for an interview, but I learned all of this stuff in college because career services offered it on campus. So I would take time out of my class schedule or sometimes it'd be in the evening, and now I'm meeting deans of certain departments or other faculty and staff, and at the same time, I'm actually learning about things that would prepare me for when I graduated from college.

Our incarcerated learners, the average person, and I don't have data for this, but I'm pretty certain that the average person that's completing a four-year degree in prison is not participate in events like that. So the colleges have to begin thinking about, "Well, how can we put on a job fair in the prison?" Reentry nonprofits do it. I've seen articles where they brought in numerous employers that are second chance-friendly, if you will, and they make it happen. So colleges, if they're diving into this work and they aren't just in this to graduate folks and they're definitely not just in this for the Pell Grant, let's think about how we can get our graduates into the jobs that speak to them, knowing that they already have other obstacles and barriers in front of them because of their conviction history.

Jeff Selingo:

So I'm curious for both of you about whether, in your opinion, there are certain types of institutions best suited to serve incarcerated students, and what kind of academic programs in terms of academic disciplines and degrees are best aligned to this population? We have a lot of listeners obviously on college campuses, and as they're listening to this, they might say, "Oh, we're interested in that, but is this best suited for who we are as an institution or what kind of academic programs we have? What kind of degrees we offer?" So I'm just curious about who's best set up for something like this, and Erin, let me start with you on that.

Erin Castro:

Well, I think first and foremost, if you care about students, then you should be in this space. If you care about upward social mobility and the role that post-secondary education attainment can play, then I would invite you to learn more about this space, figure out what's happening in your area. Oftentimes, folks who are not incarcerated or don't have a direct family member incarcerated, you drive by the prison, you don't think twice. And I think that's part of the violence of prisons at some point is that for the folks it doesn't kind of ensnarl, we go about our lives, and so I would first just kind of encourage that. We run up against this in our alumni coming to campus, we have a lot of work to do in certain fields, particularly things like education. I'm an education scholar, right? You're not going to get licensed in many fields depending on crime of conviction.

So if you're kind of a secondary teacher education kind of focus, you're probably not going to want to go in and offer that degree path because incarcerated folks are not going to be able to be successful there. However, I also don't think that should be an excuse for institutions not to get creative and pursue this work. So I think this is where we really need to listen to Terrell and to listen to the nonprofits in this field of where are folks running up against challenges in employment, and this is a desperate area of research that we need, with particular kinds of convictions, and I think for colleges and universities, let's get folks in and let's get them through degree pathways where we know that they can get licensed. And then let's also do the work of okay, if the masters in social work program is going to continue to make it really difficult, how do we work at our own institutions to say, "Okay, what can we do here to make sure that this is a viable pathway for folks?"

The majority of institutions at this point who are doing the work are two-year institutions, more than 50% are our community colleges. That absolutely makes sense. The second kind of biggest group of institutions are four year private institution, and that also makes sense because of the kind of access to private and philanthropic monies. I am at a flagship research-intensive institution and we need to increase our presence in this space, and I'm hopeful that we're kind of on the cusp of that because this is part of our mission and we need to be able to figure out how to do it well.

Jeff Selingo:

Terrell, any quick thoughts on that in terms of the type of institutions in your opinion or the types of programs? I mean, Erin brought up a good point about education, for example. Is it best to offer programs where talking about what we were talking about earlier with success after college that maybe we're not setting students up for success after college. What do you think on that?

Terrell Blount:

Yeah, it's not as easy to answer as one would think, because I absolutely believe that we should be supporting students, incarcerated students, and providing a degree path that can lead to employment in the area that they are not barred from because of policy. I think that makes absolute sense. And then at the same time, I've also argued that by not allowing folks to, let's say for example, earn a law degree while on the inside because in that particular state, one currently cannot practice law or pass the bar. If we use that and say, "Well, because people with conviction histories cannot practice law in this state, we're not going to teach people in prison how to become lawyers." I think that's working in favor of the system. However, there's countless people in our network that had those same laws in their state and they went and studied anyway and they fought it, and now they have inspired others to do the same.

So I say that to say I lean on both sides because I think that's a particular type of degree path, but there are opportunities for us to allow folks to pursue policy change, or be that one person that can overcome an obstacle, inspire others, or there's opportunities to lean into what is available to folks and what are actually viable paths for them to achieve that upward social mobility that Erin's talking about it.

Michael Horn:

It's a great answer to show the nuance. As we wrap up here, a final question for both of you, which is I want to reflect on the faculty experience teaching in these prison programs. There was a documentary a few years back, presented by Ken Burns, by Lynn Novick, the College Behind Bars, that I think did a good job of showing this side, but Erin, you've said it's among the most rewarding experiences for faculty. So I'd love to hear your reflections first.

Erin Castro:

Yeah, it's a complicated answer, I'm going to use some of Terrell's language here, because I think partly what we hear, we know that for non-incarcerated faculty, college and prison programs are often a faculty retention tool because the kinds of experiences that you have teaching on a large campus sometimes are not fulfilling, maybe is the best way to say it, and so when you go in into a prison and you walk in and all of the students have not only read weeks one and two, they've read all those supplemental readings and they've brought their own books to kind of educate you, it's a pretty transformative, I will say, experience for people. That being said, I don't feel super great about that because part of why that is made possible is because of deprivation. We have denied people inside the opportunity to interact with world-class faculty and to create relationships that we know make an impact.

So when I'm writing letters for students on campus to get into places, that's kind of the norm. How many folks coming out of prison have the ability to say, "Yeah, I'm going to ask my professor," which is I'll just make a plug why it's so important to do onsite, face-to-face or synchronous instruction. It's the relationships that we know are really impactful. So I think we've got to approach this really critically. We shouldn't be relying on the prison classroom to bolster faculty's morale, and at the same time, we need to be in those spaces and we need great faculty to do the work. I would just really encourage folks to reflect on why that's the case, and in an ideal world, that would not be the case. Incarcerated people would not be denied those opportunities, and so I think it's just a thing we want to approach with some thoughtfulness.

Michael Horn:

Terrell, I think it's a perfect way to turn it over to you because earlier you said you didn't get enough connection in many cases with faculty members, but for those that you did, can you talk about the faculty who did make a difference in your program?

Terrell Blount:

Well, I'll first say that just to touch on what Erin was just saying, I've never heard a professor who teaches a class in prison say that they didn't enjoy it. I think we tend to forget why professors get into teaching in the first place. It's because they enjoy sharing new information or information that be new may be new to the individual, the student, engaging in discourse. Those are things that are kind of absent in today's lectures halls. Teachers ask questions or instructors ask questions, and students are in their phones, they're on their laptops, they're not paying attention, and I witnessed that when I was in college, which was at the beginning of the decade, 2010s, and I see that now.

However, when you go in a prison classroom where there are no electronic distractions, you're in a place where people love to talk. When you enter those classrooms, the conversations are so rich, and I think also being exposed to individuals that in the public and in the media, they're displayed as ruthless people, heartless people, and yet you may find out about the crime that they committed, although you should not be searching for that, but they may share or disclosed to you the things that they've done, and yet they are producing these 20-page papers that are well written. It just changes their entire perspective of the system and how we view people. So I just wanted to say to institutions that are thinking about doing this work, again, it shouldn't be about your experience, but I'm just sharing what I always hear about how life-changing it is for both individuals.

Michael Horn:

Terrell, Erin, thank you for these reflections, educating us and our audience and for joining us on Future U.

Jeff Selingo:

This episode of Future U is sponsored by Ascendium Education Group, a nonprofit organization committed to helping learners from low-income backgrounds reach their education and career goals. Ascendium believes that system level change and a student-centric approach are important for our nation's efforts to boost post-secondary education and workforce training opportunities. That's why their philanthropy aims to remove systemic barriers faced by these learners, specifically first generation students, incarcerated adults, veterans, students of color, adult learners, and rural community members. For more information, visit ascendiumphilanthropy.org.

Michael Horn:

Welcome back to Future U after that inspiring and fascinating conversation with Terrell and Erin, and so many thoughts on this policy change and what it portends for incarcerated people and institutions. But Jeff, before we go there, I'm just curious, any overarching thoughts from the conversation?

Jeff Selingo:

Michael, I'd be interested in yours as well, since this is not a story that is on the radar, most news organizations unfortunately, and so we didn't hear much about this when it was coming through Congress. As we were talking to Erin and Terrell, I couldn't help but thinking of something we've talked about on the show and something that I've reported on when I was a reporter at the Chronicle about the weakening of state support for higher education and how much of the blame for that was put on how much states were spending on healthcare K through 12, and of course prisons. So this is not just about an enrollment opportunity for higher education, but to me, it's aligned with their mission and in a way to maybe right an unjust society that education is partially responsible for. At a time when this generation of college students are attuned to issues of diversity, equity, and inclusion, perhaps serving incarcerated students is a way for colleges to live up to those ideals. Michael, what were some of your thoughts?

Michael Horn:

Yeah, it's a really interesting set of points, Jeff, and we obviously had Rick Levin on the show saying, "Hey, until you solve healthcare affordability, good luck getting a higher percentage of state money for higher ed." So there's overlap here, and I hadn't thought of that. But honestly, Jeff, before this episode, several years ago before COVID, I went to the preview of that Ken Burns, Lynn Novick documentary, College Behind Bars, that I referenced. It was at Patriot Place before the pandemic. There was a conversation afterwards with former incarcerated individuals, with the McCourty twin brothers of the Patriots with the producers, and I found the whole thing incredibly moving then and it became something that I was keeping an eye on as a result when the law did move through Congress and was signed by then President Trump, and I was pleased that this happened, and it's one of those issues that actually attracts bipartisan support as well.

More broadly I would say, and both Erin and Terrell talked about this, the level of discourse that we saw in the documentary during the classes themselves around topics like political philosophy and literature, and by all accounts, that's what I hear from faculty who teach in prisons and those who visit these courses, is that this level of engagement and the level of the discourse, it's just something that you would dream of seeing in most colleges' regular courses. It's incredibly impressive. And so I'm just really glad, Jeff, that we got to cover the topic and got to hear from both of them about the why behind these programs and what makes for a good program and how to think about which courses of study are useful. But Jeff, as I was listening to both of them speak, I couldn't help but think of the implication on the institution side of this, just how much of an opportunity this is for institutions, but also frankly a risk at the same time.

Jeff Selingo:

Yes, Michael, I was thinking of the same thing, multi-opportunities and risk. Of course, the opportunities are, one, enrollment at a time of enrollment declines. We often talk on this show about different segments of students that are growing while the traditional 18 to 22-year-old is shrinking, and here is an opportunity to serve potentially hundreds of thousands of students. Within that group, we know there's particularly underrepresented students given the prison population unfortunately in the US, and so again, it's a way to serve a segment of students that higher education frankly hasn't served very well over the years, and as you just mentioned, highly engaged students. We're talking so much about the lack of engagement by traditional age students right now. We're going to have a whole show on that pretty soon with Sanjay Sarma of MIT, and so here's a chance to really get students who, as our guests talked about, are highly engaged and really want to participate in classes, but there's risks with this, I think, for institutions that kind of go in without their eyes wide open, and one of them is the Pell Grant.

The Pell Grant doesn't provide probably for a lot of institutions enough money, even a fully-funded student on the Pell Grant might not provide enough money for the institution to provide a high quality program. And then something that we talked about during our interview was the post-college outcomes. So many colleges now are being judged on their post-college outcomes, and as we talked about with our guests, some of these students might graduate from these programs and then because of their record might not be able to get jobs in the industries that they're trained in, and that not only will reflect unfortunately poorly on them, but it will also affect the institution itself. And so then Michael, the question is so who will serve these students, what type of institutions? And it was interesting that Erin noted it was mostly private colleges that have had these prison programs for years and not large publics that we typically see serving the public good. So in your mind, what types of institutions should serve this population and more importantly, how can they do it in your mind?

Michael Horn:

Yeah. Honestly, Jeff, I think I'm leaving this conversation with some big questions around the business model of what will it take for institutions to be able to do this well, and I wish we could dig in more on the economics of this because if Pell isn't enough, and to be clear in this is a partial answer to your question, it might be for a more disruptive institution like a Western Governor's University that's all online, but for the rest, what would it take? Further state subsidy to get the publics involved? In many ways, this would seem like the right kind of subsidy because it would be for individuals who often wouldn't have the means and wouldn't have the full labor market open to them to be able to get enough money to pay, and I would hope the solution, frankly, Jeff, would not involve on the other side of the ledger loans and debt. That to me, would seem like an awful solution, and if someone disagrees, let me know, because I'd love to hear why that's wrong.

But it seems to me with relatively uninformed view that saddling incarcerated individuals with loans given inability to pay and then saddling them that when they leave prison and reenter everyday society, well, that just doesn't sound like a good deal. But I'd love to learn more about how the privates finance to make the economics work because, as you said, there are certain private institutions really known for doing this, and my understanding, Jeff, is that the majority of these programs before Second Chance Pell got reinstated were funded by the colleges themselves through endowments or through state funds, but that doesn't really explain why the publics aren't at the table when the state is offering money. What are your thoughts, Jeff?

Jeff Selingo:

Well, Michael, one worry that I have is about players who are going to get into this because they're just looking for the money. Even as we say the Pell Grant might not provide enough, somebody might be able to figure out how to make the economics work, and we know there have been examples in the past where suddenly new avenues of government funding, and I'm thinking particularly of veterans here, encourage certain institutions, like in the for-profit sector, to recruit and enroll students that they didn't always serve in the best manner. Indeed, earlier this year, the Department of Education settled a case that granted nearly 6 billion in debt relief to students, mostly veterans, who said that mostly for-profit colleges deceived them into overpaying for their degrees and as a result, they didn't get their GI bill educational benefits. So again, a new tranche of money that they didn't really get to use. And so do you see for-profits jumping on this opportunity and how do we ensure that these students get the outcomes that they need?

Michael Horn:

Yeah. Jeff, look, I'm the one who's written and said that we shouldn't exclude or discriminate in policy around institutions based on tax status. I mean, it's clear to me anyway from our episode we brought back around financial aid letters that for-profits do not have a monopoly on bad behavior. The nonprofit and public sector are doing plenty of misleading in what I would call pretty downright awful things as well to say nothing of poultry graduation rates at a bunch of places. But as you know, I typically advocate for having really good policies that focus on the value to the students and outcomes because for-profits are really good at following and scaling against incentives.

But there's a downside of that in this particular case, I think, and I want to name it clearly so people don't think I'm just blindly cheerleading for the for-profits, because when those incentives are around just enrolling, regardless of how you serve those students and regardless of the outcomes, well, that strikes me as not good policy, and that's what happened I think from 2005 through 2012 or so, was for-profits scaled aggressively against what the government was paying for, and this was not a good thing. And in the case of incarcerated students, I think if it became a lucrative thing, it would be really dangerous for the public and the students themselves, especially if it meant taking out debt. But I think, Jeff, what's challenging in this case is that not all of these incarcerated students are going to get out of prison and be able to have great outcomes in the labor market, so you may have to construct policy that focuses on the inputs, which I sort of reflexively dislike, but I wonder if it'll be necessary here.

And I guess my last thought as sort of wrap up thinking on this is there could be an argument of Michael, Jeff, you're over worrying about this because, one, this won't actually be that lucrative a market. If Pell in many cases won't cover the full cost of these programs, maybe there won't be a land grab. Second, you could have one of the policies just be limiting the debt that incarcerated students can take on to make sure it doesn't become a land grab at the public and incarcerated students' expense. I would advocate for that in a heartbeat. And then third, maybe really good policy should look at outcomes for incarcerated students and should incentivize colleges to help those students find jobs and get back in the labor market in a really productive way. Make sure that those students don't just graduate, but even more important have successful life outcomes.

And if they were incentivized to do that, Jeff, then what other innovations in student supports and career integration with employers might we see in the coursework itself and so on? And that could get really neat, I think, and it would be a great set of outcomes if we did it well for society students. And as you pointed out, Jeff, perhaps help us move some money in state budgets from prisons to education. But I think we'll have to leave it there, Jeff, and with just a huge thank you to Erin Castro and Terrell Blount, as well as our sponsor, Ascendium Education, for helping raise and educate us on this really important topic on Future U, and thanks to all of you for tuning in. We'll be back next time.