CSU Fresno Graduates First Incarcerated BA Degree Cohort at Valley State Prison Propelling Learners Into CSU Dominguez Hills’ Online Master’s Degree Graduate Program
California’s first incarcerated cohort of degree-seeking college students participating in CSU-Fresno’s in-person Social Science BA degree program at Valley State Prison (VSP) are finally graduating. Following a myriad of operational hurdles caused by the chaos of Covid quarantines and staff shortages, eight of the Fresno graduates have also been accepted into the Humanities-based HUX masters program being offered by CSU Dominguez Hills. Thanks to a partnership between the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation, the Department of Rehabilitation, and California State University, VSP’s confined learners have been able to pursue their higher education aspirations without Pell funding.
Dr. Emma Hughes, a CSU-Fresno Criminology professor who has spearheaded the BA program at VSP since inception and recruited her faculty peers to teach in-person classes, had this to say about the cohort’s milestone achievement: “My colleagues and I were thrilled to see our first group of students graduate in May with their BA in Social Science, with more students set to graduate in December. They are outstanding students who have demonstrated a deep commitment to their educational endeavors. They have persevered despite any challenges that have arisen. They bring so much insight to their coursework and classroom discussions that it’s truly a learning experience for everyone involved, the professors included. The students serve as excellent role models to others who are thinking of pursuing higher education in the prison. Indeed, many of our recent graduates have already offered to mentor new students, which is wonderful to see and contributes to a broader culture that is supportive of learning and educational pursuits. We are delighted that so many of our graduates are continuing into a master’s degree program run by CSU Dominguez Hills . . . and can continue their education in that way.”
The next BA cohort has already enrolled in courses at VSP to back-fill the spots made vacant by the exiting graduates, and the HUX program grad students will begin their laptop-enabled online classes in the Fall.
During the legislative debates surrounding the impending Violent Crime Control and Law Enforcement Act of 1994 and its consequential discontinuation of Pell funding for incarcerated college students, in addition to Hillary Clinton’s “super predator” mantra, politicians deployed rhetoric that falsely framed Pell access as a zero-sum competition for scarce public funds, emphasizing the “fundamental unfairness of giving grants to prisoners when law-abiding citizens could not get them,” in a crass attempt to pit free world citizens against prisoners. Then-Senator Kay Bailey Hutchinson (R-TX) infamously cited falsely inflated fiscal statistics into the official Congressional Record of 1993 when arguing that it was “not right” that prisoners doing time “received as much as $200 million in Pell funds, courtesy of the American taxpayer.” In fact, of the $5.3 billion in Pell grants issued in 1993, prisoners received just 0.64%, or approximately $34 million in grant assistance – 1/6 the amount she cited – and as was later reported in the Atlantic Monthly in November of 1995, “no eligible applicant for a Pell grant ever lost out to an [incarcerated person].” For the thousands of voiceless students studying behind the wall across the country, facts didn’t matter.
For J.J. Lewis, who has an upcoming parole date, his academic accomplishment represents his opportunity “to inspire other African Americans who are in my carceral situation to achieve higher education. Achieving my bachelor’s degree has affirmed my belief in our ability to overcome the many systemic roadblocks and work toward my master’s degree, and eventually earn my doctorate. I am thankful to Fresno State and the dedicated professors who have created this opportunity for folks like me to succeed.” Lewis plans to work for Project Rebound and return to the carceral classroom as an instructor. “I will be back. As a professor, I will embody possibility by giving back to the very student community that helped me find my purpose.”
Contending with a learning disability made the prospect of attending college an intimidating prospect for Ronnie Watts, who candidly admitted, “I never thought I would attend college.” After doing nothing productive with his time for the first eight years of his life sentence, Watts enrolled in Feather River College’s AA degree program. “After I finished my AA I thought I was done, and then out of the blue VSP offered me a spot in the Fresno BA cohort. I was not ready for the rigor of the essay-heavy curriculum, but my classmates picked me up, created a supportive environment, and I was able to imprint on the better students among us. Our professors held us to a high standard, and as a group we were determined to show the administrators we were worthy of the opportunity.” Upon his parole, Watt plans to work with a nonprofit reentry organization that serves the community by engaging at-risk populations. “I now have a well-rounded liberal arts knowledge base that compliments my lived experience, which makes me a more effective communicator and advocate for folks headed down the carceral path.”
An Emory University study found that the national recidivism rate of approximately 55% drops dramatically as one becomes exposed to higher education. That rate, and the correlative risk to public safety new crimes represent, dives more than fourfold to 13.7% after one achieves an AA degree; that rate more than halves to 5.6% after one achieves a BA degree; and for those who earn a master’s degree, the recidivism rate is 0%. As well, a RAND study posited that for every $1 spent on higher education in prison, taxpayers save $4-$5 on reincarceration expenditures. Ironically, in press releases used by the U.S. Department of Education in both 2016 and 2020 to tout the Second Chance Pell initiative, the RAND study’s findings regarding reduced recidivism was cited as the main outcome objective of the program. It took our nation thirty years to finally reclaim what it had thrown away.
Andrew Belant matriculated to CSU Fresno from Feather River College and was accepted into the CSU Dominguez Hills HUX masters program, along with seven other VSP residents, following having achieved his AA from Feather River College. “I have been so fortunate to find meaningful rehabilitation through more than ten years of programs, including the humbling experience of earning a BA from CSU Fresno while at VSP. Incredibly, I’ve also been accepted into the HUX masters program, which only more so strengthens my resolve to pursue a Ph.D. in clinical psychology.” While there may be licensing barriers that limit how felons can transfer higher education skills to real-world occupational settings, Bellant advocates for normalization within the carceral settings. “If an uneducated violent offender lifer who earns parole can return to the prison setting to facilitate the many self-help groups organized by NGO nonprofits, that same person should be able to harness his higher education credentials to do more than just run self-help groups. If we earn our MA credentials, we should be able to teach in-person college courses, and if we earn our LCSW and Ph.D. credentials, we should be able to compete for mental health jobs working in this environment.” Bellant’s goal is to normalize the lived experience-based occupational roles for ex-offenders like him who achieve credentials in order to work with carceral populations in the arena of trauma and the maladaptive responses to trauma that so commonly undergird most crimes rooted in anger, control, and violence. “We have lived these traumas, so we should be enabled to work in these spaces.”
A 2021 study of the Bard Prison Initiative (BPI), an in-person college degree program offered at six New York state correctional facilities, found even better numbers than the RAND study. The BPI study found that the recidivism rate for those who earned an AA degree was 8.3%, and 3.1% for those who earned a BA degree. The authors of the BPI study, Matthew G.T. Denney, a Ph.D. candidate studying Political Science at Yale University, and Dr. Robert Tynes, Ph.D., the director of research for BPI, made three recommendations concerning liberal arts education programming inside prisons: 1) state governments should fund these programs and foster their expansion; 2) corrections departments should incentivize program enrollment by tethering program completion to earlier release; and 3) programs should be rigorous and high-quality.
With California partnering with nine different BA degree program providers, offering access thereto via eleven different prisons, offering an online MA program across the state that isn’t bound by student geography, and granting students six months off their sentences as they complete each degree milestone, the Golden State is meeting the bar of expectation set by the nation’s most proven carceral college provider. Not only will there be more data to assemble and study, but so too will there be more returning citizens climbing the higher education ladder and returning to the carceral setting newly armed with credentials. There will also be more opportunities to document the transformational nuances that live beneath the recidivism trends: agency, civic engagement, social mobility, and reentry.
Robb Rustad, a community college dropout sentenced to multiple life terms in 1996, earned his AA at Merced College and became one of their only two incarcerated students to achieve Superintendent’s Honors. For Rustad, these accolades, followed by earning his BA at Fresno State and being accepted into the CSU Dominguez Hills HUX master’s program, was a pinnacle achievement. “It has given me new hope about the future,” he said, “and allowed me to discover the man my family can now be proud of, instead of being forever defined only by my crimes.”
Outside of class, working as a Peer Learning Mentor tutoring secondary school students has given Rustad a sense of purpose. “Being of service is that thing that makes you accountable to another human being. When you harm society, create a permanent hole in somebody’s world, and get banished to a place like prison, there are a million reasons to retreat, go dark, and sulk. But when you discover empathy, find value in what others can teach you about yourself, and carve out a purpose-driven life for yourself, being of service becomes that superpower that fuels life itself. I can’t take back what I’ve done, but I can make every day my opportunity to put something positive into the world. Getting an education has just helped me perfect the ways I get to help others. The guys I help pass their GED test graduate high school, and then I get to watch them get into college themselves. It’s rewarding in a way I can’t fully convey.”
Recidivism and the cost-benefit analysis arguments may not be the talking points some advocates want to lead with, but they will always trump the more nuanced reasons to spend money on these programs because in the killer-whale world of negative ad politics, legislators have to be able to defend their policy positions in terms of dollars and outcomes. This isn’t 1993 – modern-day versions of Senator Joe Biden, Hillary Clinton, and Senator Hutchinson won’t be able to snatch Pell funding from us again using fuzzy stats and “bad few” scare tactics. How is Michelle Jones doing in the free world? Exactly. Learning is addictive – it changes people. Be glad it does. We now have a few decades’ worth of outcomes from different states to point to that affirm the public safety-based efficacy of in-prison college programs. In California particularly, our Governor, his Department of Rehabilitative Programs staff, and Rebecca Silbert, the state’s architect of prison higher education programs, have paved the way for our success.
It’s on us to keep achieving.
