National Data Sources on Prison Education Programs and Students

IPEDS is a system of interrelated surveys conducted annually by the U.S. Department of Education’s (ED) National Center for Education Statistics (NCES). IPEDS gathers postsecondary education information from every college, university, and technical and vocational institution that participates in federal student financial aid programs. All institutions that participate in, or have applied to participate in, any federal student financial aid program authorized by Title IV of the Higher Education Act of 1965 (such as Pell Grants and federal student loans) must complete the IPEDS surveys.

IPEDS collects data on U.S. postsecondary education in eight areas:

Internal Characteristics

Internal Pricing

Admissions

Enrollment

Financial Aid

Degree

Student Persistence

Institutional Resources

These data are made available to students and parents through the College Navigator college search website and to researchers and others through the IPEDS Data Center.

With Pell Grant eligibility reinstatement set to take effect on July 1, 2023 (for the 2023-24 award year), challenges remain about how the new law impacts IPEDS data collection and reporting. These include the following:

• Precedents for collecting comprehensive national data on the enrollment, persistence, and completion of students who attend higher education while incarcerated are lacking. As a result, effective practices for ethically and responsibly collecting and reporting data on students who are incarcerated for IPEDS are still in development.
• Practices for the reporting of institution-level data on prison education programs and students lack standardization across postsecondary institutions. Some institutions already include data on incarcerated students in their IPEDS reporting, potentially masking differences between the prison and main campuses across a variety of measures, including demographic makeup, resources and student support services, and cost structures and charges.

According to a 2022 IPEDS Technical Review Panel (TRP) report, potential upcoming changes to IPEDS data collection include the following:1

• A yes/no question may be added asking whether the institution enrolls incarcerated students for credit to identify which institutions serve these students (and provide context to their IPEDS data).
• Data may be collected on the turnover or departure rate of prison education program instructors. The definitional work will need to be completed, and the feasibility of this should be further explored before any implementation.

Once the proposed changes described above are implemented, postsecondary institutions may use IPEDS data to answer questions such as:

• How prevalent is higher education in prison in the United States?
• What are the characteristics (e.g., level, control, sector, selectivity, urbanicity, enrollment size, etc.) of institutions providing higher education in prison?
• What is the turnover rate of PEP instructors?
• How does the turnover rate of PEP instructors differ from that of non-PEP instructors?

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FSA is an office in the U.S. Department of Education and the largest provider of student financial aid in the nation. It is responsible for managing the student financial assistance programs authorized under Title IV of the Higher Education Act of 1965. These programs provide grant, work-study, and loan funds to students attending college or career school. FSA data include data collected from the Award Eligibility Determination / Central Processing System, Common Origination and Disbursement system, and the National Student Loan Data System.

FSA plans to collect additional data for students in PEPs that will be published in an annual report evaluating prison education programs and their student outcomes. Whereas IPEDS data is at the institution level, FSA’s data collection will provide data at the program and student levels. Although the full spectrum of administrative data obtained by FSA for annual reporting on incarcerated students and their programs (required by statute) is currently unknown, FSA data will likely include the number of confined or incarcerated individuals receiving Pell Grants, the amount of Pell Grant awards, and the demographics of confined or incarcerated individuals receiving Pell Grants.

The types of research questions FSA data will help answer may include the following:

• How many PEP students received Pell aid, and what are their demographic characteristics?
• For PEP students who received Pell aid, what was their cumulative or yearly Pell amount received?
• How many PEP students took out federal loans, and what are their demographic characteristics?
• For PEP federal borrowers, what was their overall amount borrowed/owed? How much did PEP students borrow/owe in subsidized and unsubsidized federal loans?
• How much did PEP students borrow in undergraduate/graduate federal loans, and how much did they owe (i.e., principal and interest) as of year ____?

PIAAC is a recurring, large-scale study of adult skills and life experiences led by the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) and conducted in the United States by NCES. PIAAC measures relationships between individuals’ educational backgrounds, workplace experiences and skills, use of information and communication technology, and cognitive skills. This international survey is administered every 10 years and has been conducted twice. PIAAC Cycle I took place between 2011 and 2018. PIACC Cycle II started in 2022, and its first round of data collection is scheduled to be completed in 2023. The first survey was conducted from February through June 2014 and targeted a nationally representative sample of incarcerated adults ages 16 to 74.

According to a 2016 report highlighting findings from the 2014 PIAAC survey, the survey seeks to assess incarcerated individuals across four domains:

• Literacy (defined as “understanding, evaluating, using, and engaging with written text to participate in society, to achieve one’s goals and to develop one’s knowledge and potential”)
• Reading components (i.e., reading vocabulary, sentence comprehension, and basic passage comprehension)
• Numeracy (defined as “the ability to access, use, interpret, and communicate mathematical information and ideas, to engage in and manage mathematical demands of a range of situations in adult life”)
• Problem solving in technology-rich environments (defined as “using digital technology, communication tools, and networks to acquire and evaluate information, communicate with others, and perform practical tasks”)

Additionally, the PIAAC survey collects data on skill use and background characteristics, including the following:

Educational Background

Work History

Intrapersonal, interpersonal, and professional skills

Use of intrapersonal, interpersonal, and professional skills on the job and at home

Examples of questions that the PIAAC survey data may answer include the following:

• How does the U.S. incarcerated population compare with the general or “household” population of U.S. adults on key demographic characteristics?
• How does the U.S. incarcerated population compare with the general or “household” population of U.S. adults on literacy and numeracy scores? How do literacy and numeracy scores vary by demographic characteristics?
• What was incarcerated individuals’ employment status before their incarceration? How does employment status vary by demographic characteristics?
• How many incarcerated individuals had a prison job? How do literacy and numeracy scores vary by prison job status and demographic characteristics?

The EJT is a digital tool originally developed for the Cornell Prison Education Program (CPEP) with the goal of notifying CPEP staff of a PEP student’s release from prison and facilitating access to postsecondary services for students and alumni after release. The tool combines publicly available criminal justice data from state corrections databases and data on student academic progress (e.g., grades, credits earned). Efforts are currently underway to further develop and expand the use of the EJT digital tool and models nationwide with funding from Ascendium Education Group.

As the EJT tool becomes more widely accessible, postsecondary institutions may be able to use it to answer questions such as:

• How many PEP students have been released throughout the PEP program, and what is their distribution by county?
• What is the education attainment (e.g., master’s degree, bachelor’s degree, associate’s degree, 30 college credits or more, etc.) or academic performance of PEP students who have been released? How do they vary by location?

The NSC is a nonprofit and nongovernmental organization that serves as a source for postsecondary and secondary student degree, diploma, and enrollment verification. The NSC also helps postsecondary institutions meet data reporting requirements set by state and federal agencies. Specifically, the NSC facilitates the calculation of college-going rates that account for private and out-of-state enrollment and compliance activities related to the periodic certification of Title IV aid recipients’ enrollment. In addition, postsecondary institutions use NSC data to track and assess the educational achievement of former students.

More than 3,300 colleges and universities, enrolling over 99% of all students in public and private U.S. institutions, report to the NSC. These institutions allow the NSC to make their information available, in full compliance with the Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act (FERPA), to educational organizations, such as outreach programs, for the betterment of education.2

The NSC’s StudentTracker tracks the postsecondary enrollment and degrees of former students nationwide. Additionally, NSC empowers institutions to better understand their students’ educational progress and pathways through the Postsecondary Data Partnership (PDP). The PDP provides postsecondary institutions with student data via data files and interactive Tableau dashboards that allow extensive data analyses and visual explorations by a wide range of campus stakeholders. Using data provided via the NSC, a postsecondary institution might answer key questions about their students after release, such as:

• Where did PEP students enroll in postsecondary education?
• How long were PEP students enrolled?
• Was PEP students’ postsecondary attendance mostly full time or less than full time?
• Did PEP students transfer between colleges?
• Did PEP students receive a college degree? If yes, what type of degree?
• Where did PEP students graduate from college?

The National Directory of Higher Education in Prison Programs is an online repository of information about higher education in prison programs in the United States initiated in 2008 by the Prison Studies Project at Harvard University. The directory serves as a resource for people seeking information about postsecondary education in prison programs in the United States, such as program descriptions, admission application, curriculum, student handbook, etc. Currently, the Alliance for Higher Education in Prison, in partnership with the Research Collaborative on Higher Education in Prison at the University of Utah and the Goldman School of Public Policy at the University of California, Berkeley, hosts the directory and also distributes the Annual Survey of Higher Education in Prison Programs, a survey collecting data about PEP institutions.

Using the National Directory of Higher Education in Prison Programs, postsecondary institutions may answer questions such as:

• How many known PEPs are there in the United States and/or in specific U.S. regions or states?
• How long have PEPs been operating?
• What types of postsecondary institutions are affiliated with PEPs?
• Where are the postsecondary institutions offering PEPs located?
• In what type of facilities and through what mode of engagement are PEPs offered?
• What credential pathways do PEPs provide?