Directions for Reply

Give feedback on whether the proposal is clear. Also, are there aspects of it that you feel the writer needs to consider to make it more persuasive? Can you suggest any adjustments to the proposed change to make it more persuasive?

With the Pell Grant poised to be fully available to incarcerated individuals by the 2023/2024 school year, I will be proposing that more colleges and universities implement degree-granting programs to incarcerated individuals. This will require partnerships with correctional facilities and there are many obstacles that will need to be overcome, but the quantitative and qualitative effects of higher education for incarcerated individuals greatly outweigh the challenges.

For my proposal I will be using research from the University of Baltimore as outlined by Andrea Cantora et al. in “Implementing Pell: Challenges and Successes of Implementing the U.S. Department of Education’s Second Chance Pell Experimental Sites Initiative.” Cantora et al. document the process the University of Baltimore went through to participate in an Experimental Sites Initiative in 2015, a program run through the Department of Education to offer degree granting educational programs to incarcerated individuals. Cantora et al. describe the program the University of Baltimore created, including the challenges they faced, to deliver college classes to those in the Jessup Correctional Institution. Their research provides a good basis of what these types of educational programs require and will help me show my audience the ins-and-outs of implementing an educational program in a correctional facility.

As my main audience will be colleges and universities, the biggest thing I believe they will have a hard time accepting is the amount of detailed work and dedicated staff that goes into implementing these programs. However, throughout my paper I will be working to show that the effects of higher education, not only for the incarcerated individual but for society as well, are worth the time and effort put into such programs. When speaking about the program they implemented, Cantora et al. state that they “believe the key to success is the people involved in the process [and] it is the genuine belief that college education can transform lives that keeps these programs running.”