Students of Northwestern University who have completed their coursework while serving time in prison are preparing to graduate on Wednesday and become the first such pupils to receive bachelor’s degrees from the highly regarded college, according to academic officials.
The class graduating from the Northwestern Prison Education Program (NPEP) is one of four cohorts with 20 incarcerated students. Four hundred incarcerated people applied for the program during the latest application cycle, with only 70 getting interviewed.
Northwestern asserted that the members of the outgoing class are the first students who are incarcerated to receive bachelor’s degree from a university ranked among the top 10 on the US News & World Report.
The pupils finished their degree requirements during the Covid-19 pandemic, when universities across the country transitioned to remote learning.
To continue classes during the pandemic, Northwestern staff brought printed class materials and scanned assignments, given limited access to technology in the correctional facilities.
“What this cohort lived through … it’s really nothing short of extraordinary,” Jennifer Lackey, the NPEP’s director, said to Axios.
Students also navigated health challenges associated with Covid-19 as they attempted to finish their year.
Broderick Hollins, a student of the program’s second cohort, has said he had to teach himself thermodynamics after missing class because of a serious bout of Covid-19.
He said that working towards a degree helped bolster his mental health, Axios reported.
“Your mind can get into a dark, deep depression. Your mind is what’s imprisoned,” Hollins said, according to Axios, adding that learning in the classroom was “the best exercise you could have in prison”.
In an interview published on Northwestern’s website, Hollins added that chemistry was the most impactful course for him. He said that “with Covid-19 fighting us, our leaders are going to our chemists and living through science”.
The lauded writer and journalist Ta-Nehisi Coates will be the commencement speaker for Wednesday’s NPEP ceremony.
Rob Scott, executive director of the Cornell Prison Education Prep (CPEP), applauded Northwestern’s program and emphasized the difficulty of achieving a degree, especially for incarcerated people with limited resources.
“This is a very difficult thing to do, let alone while you are incarcerated,” said Scott, who is also an adjunct professor at Cornell University. “The men and women that get into college programs go even double duty on putting aside some of the few things that would give them relief in their daily lives in prison, to focus on school work.”
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Like Northwestern, CPEP facilitates classes in correctional facilities in upstate New York. Enrolled students can earn an associate degree through SUNY community colleges.
“[Like Northwestern], we’ve analyzed the situation and seen that we’re laying waste to a huge population here by making them permanently incapable of restoration into the society that we have,” Scott said.
As Pell grant eligibility was expanded this year for incarcerated people, more colleges and universities will probably create higher education programs to earn bachelor’s degrees in prisons, Scott said.
An estimated 760,000 people will be able to access federal aid for education programs in correctional facilities.
Scott noted that collegiate education programs in prison can help lower recidivism rates, but they also represent a broader cultural shift to move away from punitive methods that fail to address crime.
“Is our goal to simply imagine that they’re a piece of waste that we can throw away? Because that’s what we feel like the current system does,” Scott said.
“Or are we trying to find some path to restoration and to [a] functioning, civil society? To me, that’s all this is.”