Longstanding prison education programs at two major public research universities in the South face an uncertain future

by Charlotte West

Just a few months after Georgia State University announced last spring that it would end its college program for incarcerated students, Auburn University’s program was suspended indefinitely after the Alabama Department of Corrections (DOC) barred college staff from entering the state prisons due to alleged security concerns.

The suspension of the Alabama Prison Arts + Education Project—the only bachelor’s program in Alabama’s prison system—means that more than 50 students who have spent years working on their degrees have had to put their education on hold with little information about when and if they’ll be able to finish. Additionally, more than 25,000 men and women incarcerated in Alabama no longer have access to any opportunity to earn an academic degree.

The university has made no public announcements about the suspension of the college program, but internal documents and emails obtained by Open Campus show a pattern of disruptions that had already paused the college program multiple times. Open Campus reached out repeatedly to Auburn and officials declined to comment.

Former staff say the program seemed to be supported by Auburn’s upper administration, including the president and a member of the board of trustees who attended the program’s first bachelor’s graduation in December 2023. Rob Sember, who served as academic coordinator for the program during 2022 and 2023, returned to Auburn for the event.

“The idea … that it would suddenly, within a matter of a few months, just collapse, I found quite startling,” he said.

After the Alabama Department of Corrections banned key staff members from correctional facilities due to alleged security concerns in August, Auburn suspended its credit-bearing classes, effectively shutting down the state’s only prison bachelor’s degree program. These disruptions came as prison education is expected to expand nationally with the return of Pell Grants for incarcerated students in 2023.

Experts say that the lack of access to an academic program has consequences for people during reentry. “Without Auburn in the mix, there is no path to a bachelor’s degree in Alabama,” said Ruth Delaney, director of the Unlocking Potential initiative at the Vera Institute of Justice. “The big concern is that without this, students will miss out on big opportunities in the workforce.”

Prior to the suspension of the program, Auburn also implemented a new admissions policy requiring a “secondary review” for formerly incarcerated students who wanted to study on campus. They were required to submit information about their criminal history to the university to determine whether or not they’d be allowed to enroll.

That was a change from the prior policy, which stated that incarcerated students could “continue their education at any Auburn campus” upon release, according to the 2023-24 student handbook. That document explicitly stated that students who leave due to parole would “still be considered an Auburn University student.”

This policy change appears to contradict Auburn’s memorandum of understanding with the corrections department, which guaranteed students could “fully transfer and continue their studies at any location of the college after release.” The new policy also potentially conflicts with requirements for prison education programs receiving federal financial aid, which mandate that students be able to continue their studies at any college location.

At least two formerly incarcerated students have been unable to continue their education at Auburn.

A Long History

The Alabama Prison Arts + Education Project began in the early 2000s as a prison arts program, initially offering non-credit arts and humanities courses across Alabama prisons.

The expansion of the program to include credit-bearing courses came in 2016 when Auburn was selected to participate in a pilot program under the Obama administration that restored Pell Grants for some incarcerated students for the first time since 1994. Auburn began offering a bachelor’s degree in January 2017. In 2022, the university expanded the bachelor’s program to Tutwiler, a women’s prison.

Internal program documents reveal that a $900,000 grant from the Mellon Foundation for the college program played a role in Auburn’s achievement of R1 research status in 2018. Mellon later awarded the college program a second $1.3 million grant. Auburn has not responded to questions about the status of the second Mellon grant, which was originally scheduled to run through March 2025 to support the college program. Budget documents from mid-2024 show hundreds of thousands of unspent dollars in grant funds.

There are few other academic programs in the state. J.F. Ingram State Technical College, part of the state community college system, also serves incarcerated students but it focuses primarily on career and technical education. The only other four-year institution currently offering credit-bearing classes in the state prison system is the University of North Alabama, which offers a six-class certificate in restorative justice.

Since its inception, the Alabama Prison Arts + Education Project’s college program has also faced other interruptions. In 2019, college classes were temporarily suspended due to accreditation issues. The COVID-19 pandemic further disrupted operations, and in 2020, the entire program briefly explored relocating to the University of Alabama. Throughout its history, the program has also shifted between multiple departments at Auburn, reflecting its ongoing challenge to find stable institutional support.

While the college program is suspended, Auburn has continued to teach its non-credit bearing arts classes at prisons across Alabama.

Other universities in neighboring states have also faced similar situations. In March 2024, Georgia State University announced it would be shutting down its prison education program in the next few years, citing “financial constraints and the substantial administrative demands” of securing Pell approval from the federal Education Department. A spokesperson for Georgia State wrote in an email to Open Campus that the institution is currently working with 32 students at two state prisons to complete their degrees, with two students on track to graduate this spring.

Security Breaches
Lead to Suspension

The suspension of the Alabama Prison Arts + Education Project bachelor’s program came in response to a series of events that began months earlier, according to internal emails and documents obtained by Open Campus. In January 2024, prison officials discovered a Tutwiler student wrote and submitted an article to the Prison Journalism Project, according to a Sep. 30 letter from the corrections department’s general counsel to Auburn. After this incident, the university terminated an instructor for “improperly printing and providing that article to the inmate-author.”

That incident led to investigations into possible security violations. In March 2024, a college staff member discovered that students at Tutwiler had accessed unauthorized websites, using computers issued by Auburn. Students were only supposed to be able to access approved educational websites. The staff member reported this security breach to the corrections department.

In August, prison officials issued a memo barring three college program staff members, including the individual who notified the department about the Tutwiler security breach, from entering any state prisons. That same day, Auburn Associate Provost Norman Godwin informed faculty and staff via email that the corrections department “has significant security concerns around our credit program” and that fall classes would be cancelled.

By late September, the corrections department notified Auburn that the program would remain “indefinitely suspended until personnel changes are made.”

The Tutwiler technology breach, while not explicitly cited in the official letter, appears to have been a contributing factor leading into an investigation into the three three staff members. Besides the Prison Journalism Project article, the department identified two additional reasons for barring the three staff members.

One incident involved a college staff member’s communication with prison officials about a student’s disciplinary record before a parole hearing. The other concerned an email to Tutwiler’s warden requesting permission to meet with students about class cancellations. The general counsel said these actions fell outside the educational scope outlined in their memorandum of understanding, which mandates that college staffs’ work remain “strictly educational.”

Auburn University terminated all three staff members in the following months. According to termination documents, the university based these dismissals on the staff members’ inability to access prisons, which was deemed necessary to fulfill their job responsibilities.

The staff members contested the department’s allegations, maintaining they followed established university and corrections department protocols and practices throughout their employment, according to emails obtained by Open Campus. They also expressed surprise, writing that they had no knowledge of any security concerns regarding their presence in correctional facilities prior to the launch of the investigation in August.

Students Are Left with
Unanswered Questions

More than eight months later, neither Auburn nor the Alabama Department of Corrections has offered any timeline for the program’s return, leaving students with unanswered questions about whether or not they will be able to complete their degrees.

Students told Open Campus they weren’t given any information about the reason behind the suspension other than that the program had been halted for “logistical reasons.”

Students also describe a broader pattern of inconsistent support and lack of transparency that undermined their faith in the university’s support for them. They are also anxious about whether they will ever be able to complete their degrees. “They’ve definitely been left hanging, but they can only hang on for so long,” said one former student who asked not to be named.

An Auburn University spokesperson said they were unable to find staff to answer questions about the college program’s current status. They also did not respond to questions related to whether there is a plan to help students finish their degrees.

A spokesperson for the Alabama Department of Corrections offered no comment other than to confirm that college classes remain suspended. They wrote in an email that to their knowledge no university in Alabama is seeking approval to offer Pell Grants to incarcerated students.

Sember, the former academic coordinator, has stayed in touch with several students.

“They’re devastated, they feel abandoned,” he said. “The sense is, ‘This is Alabama. This is how things work in Alabama: something good happens, and then they take it away from you.’”  

Source: Open Campus

This article was originally published by Open Campus on April 4, 2025. See all its coverage at https://www.opencampus.org

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