The Senate’s top education leaders will consider reinstating Pell grants for incarcerated students, a move that would restore a federal lifeline to the nation’s cash-strapped prison education system. Senator Lamar Alexander, Republican of Tennessee and the chairman of the Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee,… Read More
Press Type: Article
A College in the Library
The local public library is a treasured (if sometimes forgotten) American institution, free and open to all. Recognizing this, Bard College has opened a satellite college in the main branch of the public library in Brooklyn, N.Y., offering disadvantaged students a free pathway to… Read More
Bard and Brooklyn Public Library Partner for Microcollege
Bard College, a private liberal arts college in Annandale-on-Hudson, NY, and Brooklyn Public Library (BPL) have partnered to launch a “microcollege”—an innovative undergraduate program for nontraditional students—at BPL’s Central Library in Prospect Heights. Bard at Brooklyn Public Library is designed to give the experience… Read More
This ‘Microcollege’ for Low-Income Students Is Located in an Unexpected Place
The Brooklyn Public Library is an imposing building, with a 50-foot tall entryway portico and towering columns adorned with gold-leafed art. Since its completion in 1941, millions of people have walked through them in search of knowledge, culture, and, yes, books. But in 2017, more than… Read More
Bard College to Launch ‘Microcollege,’ Targeting Low-Income Applicants
The maximum-security inmates who beat a Harvard College team in a debate two years ago put a national spotlight on the prisoners’ ambitious college program, the Bard Prison Initiative. Now Bard College is launching a new satellite in another site that bucks tradition: the Brooklyn Public Library… Read More
Let Prisoners Learn While They Serve
Criminal justice officials across the country are struggling to break the recidivism cycle in which prisoners are released only to land right back behind bars. These prisoners are among the most poorly educated people in the country, and that fact holds the key to… Read More
NY to spend $7.3M on college-in-prison program
Mercy College, Bard College among colleges participating in joint state-NYC program. Read More
The Day I Learned if My Dad Would Get Parole
I knew my world could soon be filled with love and possibility instead of heartache and loneliness. Read More
Why the Ford Foundation launched a program for formerly incarcerated people—and how we did it
In late 2015, the Ford Foundation decided to "walk our talk" and hire formally incarcerated people. Our HR department explains what the process was like. Read More
How This Radical College for Inmates is Taking Its Program Outside the Walls
Nationally, nearly half of all inmates released from prison return there after committing another crime. But the recidivism rate among those who’ve earned college degrees through the Bard Prison Initiative, an adjunct program operated by liberal arts school Bard College inside six medium and maximum… Read More