On their path to a postsecondary degree, today’s learners often acquire college-level learning from multiple sources, including work experience, military service, non-credit vocational credentials, and lived experience. By formally assessing and awarding Credit for Prior Learning (CPL), colleges and universities can provide students a faster, more flexible, and more affordable path to a degree. This is especially critical in a moment marked by declining enrollment, a looming demographic cliff, and eroding public trust in higher education—all of which have prompted a growing recognition that the “traditional student,” coming directly from high school and spending four years on campus full time, no longer represents the norm. For the over 36 million American adults with some college credit but no earned credential, CPL provides a pathway back into higher education that recognizes their diverse experiences. To better serve these students and strengthen enrollment, many colleges and universities are adopting more holistic approaches to recognizing external learning and expanding their CPL policies and practices.

Despite the growing adoption of Credit for Prior Learning in higher education, incarcerated and formerly incarcerated learners remain especially disconnected from the advantages CPL can offer. While recent efforts have expanded access to higher education in prison, they have also tended to reinforce a narrow definition of academic learning—one that privileges classroom-based instruction and overlooks the diverse lived experiences that shape learning in carceral environments. As a result, incarcerated and formerly incarcerated learners have limited opportunities to accelerate their academic progress in ways that are increasingly available to other adult learners.

In a new project, developed in collaboration with College Unbound and generously supported by the Ichigo Foundation, Ithaka S+R will explore how Credit for Prior Learning can be expanded and applied to this group of learners. Although incarcerated and formerly incarcerated individuals often acquire substantial college-level learning through work assignments, formal and informal training, and the complex navigation of court and carceral systems, this learning is rarely recognized as credit-worthy. This project will focus on identifying and better understanding these learning experiences; developing and testing methods to assess and formalize learning that already occurs within carceral settings; and creating clear, transferable protocols that can help higher education institutions recognize this learning and translate it into academic credit.

College Unbound, a place-based online college with a prison education program in Rhode Island, accredited by the New England Commission of Higher Education (NECHE), has emerged as a national leader in expanding access to Credit for Prior Learning for underserved adult learners. Grounded in the belief that meaningful learning occurs continuously through lived experience—in caregiving, community leadership, and other nontraditional settings—the college has developed innovative CPL practices that validate and credit this learning.

By leveraging College Unbound’s deep experience supporting CPL for nontraditional learners and Ithaka S+R’s long-standing research expertise in postsecondary access, credit mobility, and prison education, the first phase of the project will focus on documenting and assessing learning experiences in carceral contexts and developing clear protocols for College Unbound to recognize this learning more systematically as credit-worthy.

Over the course of 12 months, we will:

  • Conduct interviews and focus groups with College Unbound faculty, staff, and students to understand and document College Unbound’s unique CPL protocols and practices.
  • Conduct interviews with incarcerated and formerly incarcerated individuals to identify and document experiences in carceral settings that may result in college-level learning.
  • Build a CPL framework at College Unbound to assess college-level learning acquired through lived experience in carceral settings to ensure that this learning is recognized and credited equally with other forms of related educational experiences.
  • Share all research findings, the CPL framework, learning experience catalog, and tools in a culminating research report that lays the groundwork to expand this model to other colleges and universities.

A student advisory committee will help guide this work and findings and takeaways will be released in a publicly available report that documents the research process and presents the tools developed to assess learning that occurs for individuals who are incarcerated. We anticipate broadening the scope of this project in two more phases. In these future phases, we will continue working with College Unbound to support adoption beyond a single institution—ensuring that other colleges and universities can implement the tools, protocols, and frameworks developed in the project’s first phase.

If you’re interested in learning more or engaging with the project, please reach out to Tommaso Bardelli (Tommaso.Bardelli@ithaka.org).