Higher Education in Texas Prisons

Discussing the Need for Comprehensive Data Collection and Evaluation in the Pell Reinstatement Process

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Postsecondary education is a vital component of successful reentry for incarcerated individuals, their families, and their communities. Given that the average educational achievement score of someone confined in the Texas Department of Criminal Justice (TDCJ) is equivalent to a 7th-grade education, educational programming is a critical long-term priority.

In 2020, Congress passed the FAFSA Simplification Act which reinstated Pell Grant eligibility for incarcerated students - regardless of sentence length or offense. Today, correctional institutions are now able to launch Pell-funded programming as part of their reentry and workforce education efforts.

For Pell Reinstatement to be sustainable, higher education stakeholders must recognize the importance of data collection and evaluation in building out prison education programming. To provide a framework for how this sustainability can come to fruition, this report does the following: (1) explores the transformative benefits of postsecondary education (2) discusses the current higher education in prison (HEIP) landscape in Texas, (3) explains the process of becoming a Pell-funded Prison Education Program (PEP), and (4) delves into the data points and data collection models that can inform each institution's PEP evaluation efforts.

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  • Over the past 40 years, studies show that completing education while incarcerated reduces one’s chances of recidivism, on average, by 28%.
  • By 2030, 62% of all jobs in the state of Texas will require a postsecondary credential, meaning a vast majority of workers will need more than just a high school diploma to obtain a job.
  • Of the approximately 130,000 individuals confined in TDCJ, less than 2% are currently enrolled in postsecondary education programs. Almost 50% of the population is eligible for Pell-funded programming.
  • Data collection is vital to maintaining the quality of prison education programs in Texas. Possible concepts to measure include, but are not limited to, instructor credentials and retention, transferability of credits, academic advising, completion rates, recidivism, and job placement rates. Data collection and evaluation should be recurrent, and it should allow for modifications to be made to existing programming.