Our Solution
By providing access to college education and avenues of higher learning to prisoners, University Beyond Bars is responding to a significant need within our community - addressing educational inequality, breaking intergenerational poverty, creating safer communities, and saving taxpayers millions through reduced recidivism rates. For those who will never be released, post-secondary education offers the intellectual challenge and positive community that truly creates freedom through education, a phrase coined by our Prisoner Advisory Committee.
Our three educational pathways (degree, certificate, lecture series) allow us to serve a large and diverse group of students. Participation in UBB is always elective, and is not limited based on length of sentence. Rather, we recognize that all students, can benefit from higher education and impact their peers, environment, and community, in positive and meaningful ways.
“A sizable portion of those who are incarcerated have had limited access to quality, non-harmful education environments and experiences. If quality education can have lasting impacts on children, why can’t it have a transformative impact on the lives of others? It can and it does.”