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Higher Education in Reentry Reimagined

Higher Education in Reentry Reimagined

How can formerly incarcerated people living in New York City be connected to long-term higher education upon release from prison?

Partners & Funders

CUNY Institute for State and Local Governance (ISLG)
State University of New York Office of Higher Education in Prison (SUNY OHEP)
Photo credit: Valerie Caviness / The State University of New York.

The Project

The State University of New York (SUNY) is committed to providing educational equity for incarcerated New Yorkers. However, connecting people to higher education opportunities upon release remains challenging. We’re working with university systems in New York City and the state to improve access to quality education for students post release and build more pathways from prison to college.

The Outcome

Over six months, we will create tools and materials to strengthen the collaboration between the SUNY and CUNY systems, as well as CBOs and other stakeholders, to streamline pathways for reentry into college for those released from prison.
Justice & Violence

Higher Education in Reentry Reimagined

Photo credit: Valerie Caviness / The State University of New York.
How can formerly incarcerated people living in New York City be connected to long-term higher education upon release from prison?

Partners & Funders

CUNY Institute for State and Local Governance (ISLG)
State University of New York Office of Higher Education in Prison (SUNY OHEP)

The Project

The State University of New York (SUNY) is committed to providing educational equity for incarcerated New Yorkers. However, connecting people to higher education opportunities upon release remains challenging. We’re working with university systems in New York City and the state to improve access to quality education for students post release and build more pathways from prison to college.

The Outcome

Over six months, we will create tools and materials to strengthen the collaboration between the SUNY and CUNY systems, as well as CBOs and other stakeholders, to streamline pathways for reentry into college for those released from prison.

Project Background

The State University of New York (SUNY) is committed to providing educational equity for incarcerated New Yorkers, currently serving over 1,000 students across 24 state prisons. When folks exit prison, they may want to continue their education journey.

In the upcoming academic year, SUNY will expand academic offerings inside prisons and re-entry supports for students in re-entry across the state. Creating stronger supports and more educational pathways for students who return back to New York City can serve as a model of what is scalable across the state. As SUNY expands programming, they want to ensure that participants’ voices are driving decision-making.

Public Policy Lab will collaborate with existing stakeholders to engage the voices of end-users in future plans for SUNY’s Office of Higher Education in Prison (SUNY OHEP). We willl work together to strengthen and streamline pathways for students transitioning out of prison. Over the next six months, we will collaborate directly with OHEP, CUNY’s Institute for State and Local Governance (ISLG), and other stakeholder groups. Through human-centered research and design, PPL will work with formerly incarcerated students to co-design resources and tools to ease the experience of reentering CUNY and other NYC-based colleges after prison.

Throughout the project, we employ human-centered research, design, and implementation methods and have been working side-by-side with two peer researchers. Our peer researchers, who have personal experience pursuing higher education during reentry, are assisting with research tasks, collaborating on design concepts, and providing invaluable context to the greater PPL team about the nuances of transitioning out of prison. During the peer researchers’ onboarding, we trained them in the foundations of PPL’s human-centered design research practice, and they helped craft our research approach.

Project Goals

  • Strengthen collaboration between SUNY, CUNY, CBOs, and other stakeholder groups to more seamlessly support formerly incarcerated students in NYC to pursue higher education programs.
  • Co-design and develop resources with formerly incarcerated students that will improve their experience continuing higher education after prison.
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Research Hours

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Research Participants

What We Found

Inquiry Areas

  • What drives people’s decisions to continue their education after their release from prison?
  • What enables people to pursue higher education after their release from prison?
  • What supports the ongoing success of formerly incarcerated students once enrolled in CUNY and other NYC-based higher education programs?

To explore our inquiry areas, we conducted desk research, held semi-structured interviews and a group interview. We spoke with university staff, professors, reentry services providers, and formerly incarcerated people.

Design Stimuli

During interviews, we asked participants open-ended questions to elicit stories about their lived experience, like “if your educational journey were a book, what’s the name of the chapter you’re on?”

Desk Research Highlights
We revisited reports from reentry experts and research institutions. That research added detail to our understanding of the current state of higher education in prison and opportunities to strengthen support during reentry. Here are some highlights from that research:

▸ More than 750,000 people in prison are eligible to enroll in a post-secondary program, and surveys indicate that more than 70 percent of those individuals are interested in post-secondary education. (Taber et al., 2024)

▸ In a federal study of people released from state prisons, 94 percent of incarcerated adults identified education as a key reentry need. (Visher & Lattimore, 2007)

▸ 34 percent of incarcerated SUNY students in New York will return to New York City upon their release from prison. (Gais et al., 2023)

▸ Only 8 percent of students serving Aggregate Minimum Sentences of less than 4 years graduated, while nearly 29 percent of students serving sentences of at least 20 years completed their associate degree programs. (Gais et al., 2023)

What We Heard

Here are a few highlights from the stories we heard:

Findings
After hearing from people at all levels of the reentry system, we identified four pivotal stages in one’s journey from prison to college and highlighted emerging themes for each moment.

Considering Higher Education In this phase, formerly incarcerated students are forming ideas about what higher education is and what it could do for them. That can occur before, during, or after incarceration. While considering these opportunities, they may also be evaluating themselves – judging whether or not they’ll be able to successfully complete the program. Emerging themes:

  1. Justice-impacted people often learn about higher education from their peers who have enrolled in programs.
  2. Stigma around pursuing higher education is persistent and has a large impact on justice-impacted people’s choice to pursue higher education.
  3. For justice-impacted people, choosing to pursue higher education can feel like a choice to change their identity. That’s a motivating factor for some, but a deterrent for others.
  4. Whether inside or outside of prison, there are many reasons why someone would join a higher education program. Inside, it’s often about improving daily life. Outside, there’s a wider variety of reasons, which are often more personal.

Listen to participants discuss considering higher education in their own words.

Preparing for Release Preparing for release involves transitioning between support networks and communities – between those who exist inside prison and those who exist outside. It’s both an end and a beginning. To thrive in reentry, people need their basic needs met, like food, shelter, and financial security. Reentry preparation should make it clear where people can go for support with their physical and emotional needs. Emerging themes:

  1. Preparing for release is also about preparing to leave behind a familiar and accessible support system, which isn’t guaranteed after leaving prison.
  2. There is a lack of digital literacy programs teaching skills necessary to confidently use technology at work and school. The tech literacy programs that do exist need to be more widely advertised.
  3. Preparing for release requires gathering lots of personal documents, like medical records, identification documents, and potentially academic transcripts. Those documents allow people to access the support they may need during reentry.
  4. To feel supported during reentry, people need direct connections to and strong relationships with support organizations prior to their release from prison.

Listen to participants discuss preparing for release in their own words.

Finding Support during Reentry Formerly incarcerated people have to juggle a lot during reentry. Finding stable living conditions and employment are usually the first priorities after release. Before those are sorted out, expecting someone to think hard about higher education is unrealistic. Support during reentry comes in a variety of forms, but strong, sometimes personal relationships are what most people recount as the vital foundation to their success in reentry. Emerging themes:

  1. Among formerly incarcerated people, education and employment are often framed as competing priorities. Reentry providers aim to reframe these aspects of one’s life as complementary.
  2. Pre-college classes aimed at improving both hard and soft skills required for college are beneficial. Building time management skills is especially important because formerly incarcerated people need to reorient themselves to time outside of prison.
  3. Formerly incarcerated people are often guided towards careers in human services, like social work. Less career guidance and fewer opportunities are available for other career fields.
  4. People feel the most supported by reentry providers with whom they develop a personal relationship.

Listen to participants discuss finding support during reentry in their own words.

Continuing Higher Education Once they are enrolled, formerly incarcerated students have unique needs that require specialized support. Individuals who understand those unique needs firsthand are best suited to provide that support. Peer support is a catalyst to success in higher education programs. Emerging themes:

  1. Peer mentorship is vital for formerly incarcerated students. The expertise and level of understanding offered by their shared lived experience allows peer mentors to provide better, more personalized support to formerly incarcerated students during college.
  2. Professional development for formerly incarcerated people needs further specialization. It should teach how experiences or skills developed in prison can be leveraged in school or work. It should also teach formerly incarcerated people the basics of employment law, to allow for stronger self-advocacy in professional settings.
  3. Higher education teachers and administrators see a need for improved understanding amongst colleagues of the formerly incarcerated student’s experience. They see value in creating communities of support for these students.
  4. During college, financial aid application requirements and procedures to prove satisfactory academic progress are especially confusing. They require additional hands on support.

Listen to participants discuss continuing higher education in their own words.

Research Shareout

Research participants and project partners gathered at our office to immerse themselves in the research stories. During the share-out, attendees moved between stations that reflected the four journey stages. The exhibit-style setup transported attendees into the field through videos and audio clips.

What We Designed

We worked with reentry providers and formerly incarcerated people to co-design programs and products focused on the following goals:

  1. Strengthening partnerships between reentry providers and university faculty and staff.
  2. Combating stigma around the reentry experience.

During co-design, service providers emphasized the importance of strong relationships between reentry providers and higher education programs. They expressed that successful collaboration is not necessarily fostered through formal contracts or memorandums but through interpersonal trust built over time.

With this in mind, the team co-designed a year-long discussion series, the Roundtable for Higher Education in Reentry Reimagined (HERR): A Circle Series. The roundtable brings together service providers, educators, and formerly incarcerated students to discuss how the group can enhance their collaboration in support of formerly incarcerated students pursuing higher education.

Inspired by Indigenous practices and the principles of restorative justice, the roundtable will use a “community-building circles” approach, which emphasizes equitable sharing, deep listening, and relationship building while collaborating towards a shared goal. These conversations will build relationships to dismantle silos in the reentry and education support networks available to formerly incarcerated people.

Roundtable Circle Series

Six community-building circles will take palce throughout 2025, each focusing on a different theme identified during our research. This brochure was distributed to participants during the first roundtable.

To help facilitate these conversations, the team created three tools for meeting organizers and facilitators:

  • An educational video about the challenges facing formerly incarcerated students in reentry,
  • An introductory presentation for onboarding new participants to the roundtable events, clarifying the events’ mission and vision,
  • A circle facilitation guide for those facilitating the community-building circle during each roundtable event.

What We Implemented

Working with our project partners, we gathered a targeted network of higher education and reentry providers in NYC as ongoing participants in the year-long roundtable series.

Participating organizations include:

  • The Office of Higher Education in Prison at SUNY
  • CUNY Institute for State & Local Governance
  • NYC Mayor’s Office for Economic Opportunity
  • Project Impact at Borough of Manhattan Community College
  • John Jay College Institute for Justice and Opportunity
  • New York University’s Prison Education Program
  • Columbia University’s Justice-in-Education Program
  • The Fortune Society
  • College & Community Fellowship
  • Exodus Transitional Community
  • The Liberty Fund

Leading up to the first roundtable event, we trained the facilitators, or circle-keepers, using the Facilitation Guide and prepped them to debut the From Prison to College: Navigating the Transition to Campus video.

We hosted the first roundtable in February 2025 with twenty representatives from higher education and reentry service providers. The session began with a screening of the video to share learnings from PPL’s research and establish a shared understanding of the reentry experience amongst roundtable participants.

Five more gatherings will occur throughout 2025, with SUNY OHEP and two peer researchers from PPL’s project team taking over future facilitation. By prioritizing community building amongst the wider reentry and higher education network in NYC, the Roundtable for HERR sets an example for a more human-centered future in systems change work.

In the next 3-6 months, we hope these tools will help to:

  1. Enhance collaboration throughout the reentry support network.
  2. Streamline referral pathways for students between reentry providers and college programs.
  3. Increase awareness of the challenges facing formerly incarcerated people returning to higher education.

In the longer term, we hope the tools will lead to:

  1. Increased enrollment to higher education institutions in NYC post-release from NY State Prisons.
  2. Increased graduation rates for formerly incarcerated students.

First HERR Roundtable

During our first roundtable, we shared visions of what could be accomplished with improved collaboration throughout 2025 and discussed the power of coalition-building as a tool for connecting more students with educational opportunities.

PPL is a tax-exempt 501(c)(3)
nonprofit organization.

info@publicpolicylab.org
+1 646 535 6535

20 Jay Street, Suite 203

Brooklyn, NY 11201

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