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Find a Higher Education in Prison Program. The Alliance for Higher Education in Prison maintains the most comprehensive resource in the United States for people seeking information about national college in prison programs.

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The Texas Prison Education Initiative (TPEI) is a volunteer-run organization at The University of Texas at Austin. Our mission is to provide free credit-bearing college courses to incarcerated youth and adults. We strive to create educational opportunities, reduce inequalities in higher education, and change the lives of incarcerated Texans and their families.

Since 2018, over 300 incarcerated youths and students have enrolled in our pre-college, college, and enrichment courses, and approximately 100 graduate students, postdocs, and faculty members volunteered with TPEI. We also work with local organizations including The Center for Students in Recovery, and the Travis County Re-Entry Roundtable to enable students to continue their education upon release.

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The Texas Prison Education Initiative (TPEI) is a volunteer-run organization at The University of Texas at Austin. Our mission is to provide free credit-bearing college courses to incarcerated youth and adults. We strive to create educational opportunities, reduce inequalities in higher education, and change the lives of incarcerated Texans and their families.

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Link to full documentary on Bard Prison Initiative

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Premiered November 2019

Men and women earn college degrees - and a chance at new beginnings - while incarcerated. More More

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Explore the transformative power of education through the eyes of a dozen incarcerated men and women trying to earn college degrees - and a chance at new beginnings - from one of the country's most rigorous prison education programs. A film by Lynn Novick.

Funding for College Behind Bars is provided by Bank of America; PBS; Ford Foundation / JustFilms; National Endowment for the Humanities; Meg & Tomas Bergstrand; Regina K. Scully; The Lise ... More

About the Film

College Behind Bars, a four-part documentary film series directed by award-winning filmmaker Lynn Novick, produced by Sarah Botstein, and executive produced by Ken Burns, tells the story of a small group of incarcerated men and women struggling to earn college degrees and turn their lives around in one of the most rigorous and effective prison education programs in the United States - the Bard Prison Initiative.

Shot over four years in maximum and medium security prisons in New York State, the four-hour film takes viewers on a stark and intimate journey into one of the most pressing issues of our time - our failure to provide meaningful rehabilitation for the over two million Americans living behind bars. Through the personal stories of the students and their families, the film reveals the transformative power of higher education and puts a human face on America's criminal justice crisis. It raises questions we urgently need to address: What is prison for? Who has access to educational opportunity? Who among us is capable of academic excellence? How can we have justice without redemption?

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Explore the transformative power of education through the eyes of a dozen incarcerated men and women trying to earn college degrees - and a chance at new beginnings - from one of the country's most rigorous prison education programs. A film by Lynn Novick.

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Insights from formerly incarcerated individuals

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Insights from formerly incarcerated individuals

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Taking the door off the American prison system with hosts Jeremy Hiltz and Brandon Brown.

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The Georgia State University Prison Education Project (GSUPEP) is an initiative of Georgia State University Perimeter College, providing college education to incarcerated individuals, aiding in reentry efforts, and promoting awareness of mass incarceration and criminal justice among our student body.

As the only public institution in the state of Georgia offering for-credit education to underserved communities, GSUPEP embodies the university's mission. Despite historic achievements, including graduating the first two classes of incarcerated students in 30 years in the state of Georgia, the university has decided to defund this program.

The university's decision to withdraw financial support threatens our program's continuation, undermining the university's commitment to educational access and equity.

We urge you to join us in advocating for GSUPEP's preservation. Please sign and share this petition. Together, we can safeguard educational opportunities for all!

Learn more about the program here!

***As a note, we deeply appreciate the donations made in support of saving this program. Donations made through Change.org are automatically routed to increase petition views. The funds are not available to GSUPEP for any other purpose as we do not have access or control over them. Thank you!***

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The Georgia State University Prison Education Project (GSUPEP) is an initiative of Georgia State University Perimeter College, providing college education to incarcerated individuals, aiding in reentry efforts, and promoting awareness of mass incarceration and criminal justice among our student body.

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The Prison Education Paradox | Jennifer Lackey | TEDxNorthwesternU

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The Alliance for Higher Education in Prison (Alliance) is a national network supporting the growth of quality higher education for currently and formerly incarcerated people.

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Increasing access to learning materials in prisons

To get an equitable, quality education, justice-impacted students require access to library and educational materials. This material is seldom available on the inside, due largely to lack of technology and internet access, precluding students from having the materials they need and developing the research skills that are a vital component of a postsecondary education.

Building off work that began in 2007 when the Bard Prison Initiative asked JSTOR to provide an offline index of the archive to its students, JSTOR Labs is now creating a more robust, next-generation tool to support incarcerated students conducting research without access to the internet. Additionally, we have begun a pilot project to design and test a version of JSTOR that can be accessed directly by students, for use in states where limited internet access is available. Using these offline and direct access solutions, our goal is to make JSTOR freely available to all US higher education in prison programs.

Producing research to guide programs and policy

Higher education in prison is at a critical juncture. With the restoration of Pell Grants for incarcerated students and a strong and growing cohort of college- and university-affiliated programs, there is a sharpened national focus on the intersection of systemic racism, mass incarceration, and the pursuit of educational equity. Our research focuses on ensuring that incarcerated adults are afforded the opportunity to receive a high-quality education that leads to positive outcomes.

Deepening public understanding

By bringing previously unheard voices of justice-impacted individuals into college and high school classrooms, into our libraries, and into public discourse, we are promoting learning and dialogue.

Our American Prison Newspapers: 1880-2020 project, led by our Reveal Digital team, is digitizing hundreds of newspapers published in US prisons over the past 200 years and making them openly accessible online. The resulting collection will be preserved by our Portico team, which manages the long-term preservation of digital content at scale, including significant historical newspaper collections. We are also adding a Fellow to our Reveal Digital team to produce supporting materials for teaching with this primary source collection, and a new JSTOR Daily editor will also commission articles designed to highlight individual newspapers and improve our collective understanding of mass incarceration.

Read related stories on JSTOR Daily

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Improving higher education in prisons - ITHAKA

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ITHAKA supports justice-impacted individuals by increasing the quality of, and their access to, higher education in prisons.

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This has really good information on the intersectionality of race, poverty, income and education

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The big picture on how many people are locked up in the United States and why

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Vera works closely with government and civic leaders to urgently build and improve justice systems that ensure fairness, promote safety, and strengthen communities.

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Grace Randolph has been an intern through InterVarsity for Summer 2023. She is a rising second-year at the University of Richmond, majoring in Journalism. Over the last few months, she's been able to do a deep-dive on congregations and affordable housing....

Aleshia Williams has been an intern through InterVarsity in Summer 2023. She is a rising third-year student at UVA, majoring in African and African American Studies. Over the last few months, she's been able to engage on many priority VICPP programs....

Just days ago, on Jan. 30, 2023, 400 Muslims gathered to pray in a mosque in Peshawar, Pakistan, which sits along the border of Afghanistan. Unsuspecting worshipers raised their hands and recited Allahu Akbar, marking the very beginning of the ritual...

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GET INVOLVED Engaging people of faith and goodwill to advocate for racial, social, and economic justice in Virginia's policies and practices through education, prayer and action.

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THEI provides holistic support to incarcerated scholars as they pursue college programs in Tennessee prisons leading to associate and bachelor degrees, and as they prepare for release and re-entry.

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THEI - Tennessee Higher Education in Prison Initiative

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Tennessee Higher Education in Prison Initiative is a non-profit organization working to disrupt systems of harm and create opportunities for autonomy and success by providing college access to people inside Tennessee prisons, preparing students for skillful re-entry, and reducing barriers to continued education and achievement.

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—Max Kenner ’01, Executive Director
Tow Chair for Democracy & Education