On a spring day earlier this year, the prison gymnasium at the Maryland Correctional Institution for women, about 25 minutes outside Baltimore, was decorated in blue and yellow balloons and flowers. State officials and teary family members gathered with a group of incarcerated people to mark a historic moment: The state’s first ever college graduation ceremony at a women’s prison.

Janet Johnson, one of the two graduates, was bubbling with emotion. She said she waited over 10 years for this moment.

“I feel like this opens a door for me.”

She’s already thinking about what’s next.

“I really want my master’s degree. I just want to know, like, how do I get it done? That’s my next goal.”

Whatever comes next, Johnson has already defied the odds with a bachelor’s. Across the country, people incarcerated in women’s prisons have less access to higher education opportunities compared to men’s prisons. That’s according to research from the Vera Institute of Justice, a nonprofit that tracks educational opportunities for incarcerated people.

For many people in prison, access to college courses is dependent on access to federal financial aid, including Pell Grants, which currently offer up to $7,395 a year for low-income students.

According to Vera, in over half of all states, men’s prisons offer more access to Pell Grant-eligible courses than women’s prisons do. And it’s not just about the money to pay for college: In 11 states, Vera found there were no college programs at all in women’s prisons.

There are many reasons for these disparities. In 2022, Vera found that shorter sentences often meant women did not have sufficient time to complete degrees while incarcerated.

People in men’s prisons often have the freedom to transfer between facilities in pursuit of the courses they need to complete degrees. But local prison systems often have fewer women’s prisons; so if a course isn’t offered, in many cases, the student simply can’t take it.

Ruth Delaney, at Vera, says there’s a lot states can do to address these inequities and increase access to higher education in women’s prisons.

Janet Johnson, left, hugs her sister, Vanilla Murphy, at a graduation ceremony inside the prison gymnasium at the Maryland Correctional Institution for women.

Jenny Abamu/for NPR

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“What we’d like to see is colleges and corrections agencies kind of attune their policies a bit better, so that people could, for example, enroll full time instead of part time or in other ways support more continuous enrollment that would allow someone to complete a bit sooner.”

She says it’s not uncommon for people in prison to take a decade to complete a degree, as Janet Johnson did.

“10 years is a very long time,” she says. “And it’s going to exclude people who don’t have sentences of that length.”

How Pell Grants could help

Delaney says prisons and colleges also need to re-engage with the Pell Grant program. In 2020, President Trump signed legislation that fully reinstated Pell Grant access to all incarcerated individuals for the first time since 1994. The legislation passed with rare bipartisan support, and the law went into effect one year ago in July, opening up a new pipeline of funding for higher education in prison.

States around the country are beginning to ramp up course offerings, but in many places the process has been slow and bureaucratic. According to Vera, though access has expanded, there’s still a long way to go: Many incarcerated people don’t know how to apply for Pell funding, and poor internet access can make it difficult to host virtual classes.

“The restoration of Pell Grants for people in prison will enable more colleges to launch programs in women’s facilities where access to postsecondary education has been limited in the past,” says Delaney. “With greater access to college in prison, more people will leave women’s prisons with the skills and credentials they need to secure living-wage jobs upon their release.”

How states are changing policies

A new legislative effort in Maryland aims to address the inequities laid out in the Vera reports.

“We know that women … are often the heads of households,” says Maryland Delegate Marlon Amprey, who sponsored a pair of prison education reform bills in his state. “How are we making sure heads of households are making enough money to sustain their families if we are not giving women the same opportunities, workforce training, job training while they are incarcerated?”

In Maryland, Amprey’s bills, which were signed into law earlier this year, require the Maryland Department of Public Safety and Correctional Services to help incarcerated people access federal Pell Grants. One of the laws also directs the department to track students’ education progress.

The new laws also come with a host of reforms to the Maryland Department of Public Safety and Correctional Services. Maryland is now the first state, according to the department, where a formal deal has been established with the entire state university system: As part of the agreement, all 12 public colleges will eventually offer bachelor’s degrees and credit-based certificates to incarcerated individuals.

Amprey says he looked to California when he was drafting the new legislation: Over the last few years, the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation has penned multiple agreements with community colleges to teach in all of the state’s prisons. Eight of those prisons offer bachelor’s degree programs, two of which are available in women’s facilities.

But all of these programs are relatively new and it is too soon to say whether changes in Maryland or California will lead to more women completing degrees.

Ruth Delaney, at Vera, says efforts to innovate prison education aren’t limited to academics. She points to reforms in Louisiana, which was early to offer internet access to incarcerated people.

Still, she says the level of collaboration in Maryland is unique.

“What really excites me about what is happening in Maryland is this inter-agency connectedness and the willingness of the department of corrections to think about this legislation with optimism. I would love to see more of that across the country.”

Delaney is hopeful it will make a difference, and “help ensure people in Maryland’s women’s prison are not overlooked when it comes to accessing and completing college in prison.”

How colleges can adapt to better serve incarcerated people

Goucher College, where Janet Johnson got her degree in American Studies, has provided courses at the Maryland Correctional Institution for women since 2012.

Meredith Conde, director of operations and prison affairs for the Goucher Prison Education Partnership, says Goucher is pursuing changes that would allow students to take classes full time, which, she hopes, would allow them to finish bachelor’s degrees in as little as five years. That would give them a better chance of graduating before they’re released, and allow the college to serve more students over time.

But she says most of their students have full-time assigned work and are only able to take classes in the late afternoon or evening.

“Goucher is working with [the department of corrections] to make college a student’s ‘job assignment’ in the same way that GED classes are typically considered someone’s ‘job assignment’ in prison,” explained Conde in a statement to NPR. “This would enable students to enroll in classes all day, rather than just in the late afternoon and evening.”

Conde says that’s not the only barrier. There’s also limited space, and classrooms are often in use during the day by GED instructors. She says Goucher has a plan to build trailers at each of the prisons they work in so college classes can be held all day.

“Not defined by the worst moment in our life”

Back at the Maryland Correctional Institution for women, college graduate Janet Johnson said that when she gets out, she wants to be an advocate for youth. Her thesis challenges the state to consider more rehabilitative sentences for young adults, who she argues are not at full maturity until their mid-twenties.

Janet Johnson, who spent the last 10 years working toward a college degree in prison, presents her senior thesis at her college graduation ceremony.

Jenny Abamu/for NPR

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As she confidently presented her work to the crowd and took questions from multiple press outlets, she seemed to already be manifesting her dreams.

“Even though I am still incarcerated, I do my best to give back to other people,” she said in an interview with NPR. “Whether it’s here or home, if I hear that there is a problem and I can figure it out or my family could help, we are going to help. We, as incarcerated individuals, are not defined by the worst moment in our life.”

Jenny Abamu is a freelance journalist based in Bethesda, Md. She previously covered education for WAMU, and has a newsletter where she writes about writing.