The Bard Prison Initiative and its suite of community-based tuition-free colleges are the vanguard in college access and equity in the US.
BPI, the Microcolleges, and the BardBac all grow out of the same fundamental assumption: that there are excellent potential students everywhere. Our mission is to find and enroll those students in ambitious liberal arts degree programs, at no cost to them.
Bard Prison Initiative
Students working together at Eastern Correctional Facility
The Bard Prison Initiative (BPI) extends the full breadth and depth of the Bard College liberal arts curriculum into seven New York State prisons. BPI creates and protects academic spaces where students and faculty engage in ambitious college coursework, challenge one another intellectually, and build supportive community.
What makes BPI unique?
Bard Microcolleges
Microcollege graduates on the steps of the Brooklyn Public Library.
Beginning in 2016, BPI began replicating this model of engaging unlikely college students in full time, tuition-free, degree granting college outside of prison. The Bard Microcollege expands BPI’s model for radical inclusivity in undergraduate education by bringing the same ambitious, tuition-free college opportunities to institutions within urban communities.
Learn more and how to apply:
Campus Network
The pilot Microcollege was launched in Holyoke, MA in 2016. In 2018 and 2021, Microcolleges were added in Brooklyn and Harlem, NY. Partners provide local know-how and credibility, class and study space, and a community from which to draw a student body. They bring unique expertise and resources and are deeply invested in democratizing access to education. These qualities provide a context in which students can focus on and thrive in college.
Student Community
Bard Microcollege students are ambitious, intellectually curious, and willing to drive their own learning process. Often, they had been deterred from college, put their educations on hold, or were frustrated by impersonal learning environments. Along with a full-time courseload, Microcollege students participate in workshops and leadership summits, create print publications with student writings, and support their broader communities through internships with local organizations.
“I think so many more people than we know feel like they’re left out of traditional college experience.”
– Delano Burrowes ’21
Brooklyn
Bard at BPL
Expanding from a shared commitment to democratize access to all kinds of learning, Brooklyn Public Library and the Bard Prison Initiative have created a unique, borough-based college for undergraduates of every age. The library provides an ideal window into learning the vibrant history, culture, and art of the borough.
Harlem
Bard Microcollege for Just Community Leadership
In a crucial moment for criminal justice reform, this Microcollege deploys the expertise and resources of three leading institutions — BPI, JustLeadershipUSA, and College and Community Fellowship — to cultivate directly impacted leaders, decision-makers, and advocates of the future.
Holyoke
Bard Microcollege Holyoke
Bard Microcollege Holyoke is a unique, tuition-free college for women of the Pioneer Valley. Developed in partnership between the Bard Prison Initiative and The Care Center, the Microcollege is a community-based opportunity for women to enroll full time at Bard College at no cost.
The Bard Baccalaureate
BardBac graduates at the Annandale-on-Hudson campus.
The Bard Baccalaureate (BardBac) is a full-time, full-tuition scholarship opportunity for adult students pursuing BA degrees on Bard’s main campus. BardBac students may have had their college degree paths interrupted or put on hold for a variety of reasons: the need to work, family obligations, student loan debt, structural racism or other forms of inequity. Designed with students from New York’s Hudson Valley in mind, the BardBac also offers alumni of BPI and the Microcolleges a unique opportunity to complete a bachelor’s degree on campus, among a community of other adult learners.
Learn more and how to apply:
BPI on Campus
The BardBac brings BPI’s 20+ years of learning home to Bard College’s campus in Annandale-on-Hudson, NY. BardBac students pay nothing for tuition, fees, and books while they pursue their BA on the main Bard campus. They study together as a cohort for one class per semester, and the rest of their classes are individually chosen, based on their own academic interests.
Student Community
Premised on reaching students in the Bard region who have been excluded from higher education because of structural racism and other forms of discrimination, the BardBac has quickly become a center of BPI’s work, engaging adult learners on campus to help them — and us — achieve full potential through the liberal arts.
“I had always planned on going to school. It never occurred to me that I’d be well into my fifties before I’d finally keep that promise to myself. Being awarded this scholarship is the opportunity and gift of my lifetime.”
— Monica Byrne ’25