By Max Lubbers for Chalkbeat Chicago.
Broadcast version by Terri Dee for Illinois News Service reporting for the Chalkbeat Chicago-Public News Service Collaboration
Jason Marks, 48, said he remembers sitting in a prison cell and thinking to himself: "Is this it? Am I going to die in prison?"
He wanted the answer to be no. But Marks had been in and out of the criminal justice system since his youth - and he didn't know how to break that cycle.
"I was running in a hamster wheel, watching everybody in the world," he said about a week after his release from prison. "I wake up one day, I look in the mirror, I got gray in my goatee. So I'm like: What am I going to do?"
About half a year after he asked himself that question, Marks hit a turning point. He was transferred to a different prison - East Moline Correctional Center - and there, he heard about a program that could grant him a bachelor's degree, run through Augustana College in Rock Island.
Marks applied and got in - and could finally envision a way off the hamster wheel.
"I actually felt like a human being when I was in class," he said. "I don't want this to sound cliche or take this lightly; it's changed my life."
Access to higher education is limited in prison. In 1994, a sweeping federal crime bill cut incarcerated people off from Pell Grants, a form of federal need-based financial aid. In the years after the legislation went into effect, the number of higher education programs in prison fell sharply across the nation, from estimates of more than 700 in the early 1990s to eight in 1997, according to a historical review by the American Enterprise Institute.
This month, for the first time in nearly three decades, the federal government restored Pell Grants to incarcerated people. More than 760,000 incarcerated people across the nation could benefit, the U.S. Department of Education estimates.
A handful of Illinois prisons currently offer non-vocational higher education, according to a 2022 report by the Illinois Higher Education in Prison (HEP) Task Force. That may change under the new policy - but availability of program spots and systemic educational issues could keep many people in prison from actually enrolling this fall.
Eligibility depends on correctional facility, educational level
Pell Grant eligibility will depend on whether an incarcerated person lives in a prison with a federally-approved program. The U.S. Department of Education opened up applications early this month and will approve higher education institutions on a rolling basis.
So it's hard to pin down the number of incarcerated students in Illinois who will receive Pell Grants this school year. But a previous initiative offers clues into how funding will work.
Before this month's change, nearly 200 colleges across the country participated in the "Second Chance Pell Experiment," giving them permission to disburse Pell Grant funds, according to the U.S. Department of Education. Two existing college programs in Illinois drew upon this funding, and both will continue to provide services, said Naomi Puzzello, a spokesperson from the Illinois Department of Corrections.
Augustana Prison Education Program, which Marks attended, is one of those sites.
Sharon Varallo, the executive director of Augustana's program, said the Pell Grant money makes a dent in the cost of running the program. But she said grants and private donors heavily contribute so incarcerated students can attend for free. Augustana enrolled 10 students the first year, then an additional 24 the next year, she said.
"It's going to take more than just Pell (Grants) to fix this system," she said. "It will be a game changer, but it's not going to be a tsunami of new programs opening, I guarantee you that. It is very hard to get going."
The Illinois Department of Corrections contracts some colleges to provide courses, mostly vocational, and Puzzello said these particular programs won't be impacted by Pell restoration as of now. But the majority of higher education programs in Illinois prisons are not state-funded, and could apply to use Pell as another funding stream, as the case with Augustana.
A wide expansion of programs may require more incentive - or more money - than Pell, Varallo said. The Illinois Department of Corrections had not received interest for new programs as of late July, said Puzzello, the spokesperson for the agency.
For now, ending up in a prison with a program is a matter of chance - and there are only so many spots.
A little over 400 people in state-run prisons enrolled in non-contractual programs during the 2021 school year, according to the most recent public data. That's less than 2% of the total prison population at the time, based on the Illinois Department of Corrections' quarterly reports.
Along with having physical access to a program, eligibility depends on sentence length and education level. The Illinois Department of Corrections' policy requires prospective students to have enough time on their sentence to benefit from a program, though it does not outline exact lengths.
Per policy, participants must also have a high school diploma or an equivalent, and they must score an 8 or higher on the Test of Adult Basic Education (TABE), a nationwide assessment of math, reading, and language skills. Over 60% of test-takers in the state correctional system scored below a 6 on the TABE in 2020, according to the Illinois HEP Task Force report.
Often, incarcerated people face disparities in their education before prison, said Xavier Perez, a criminology professor at DePaul University.
So Pell Grants can help with funding, but they won't erase every barrier to college access, said Perez. Rather, he said broader, structural change will be necessary, and not only around the prison system. He points to underfunded schools - along with poverty, lack of adequate healthcare, and structural racism - as some of the root issues interlocking with incarceration.
For Perez, education was his own escape. He said he went to a juvenile facility as a teenager, but found a refuge through reading and writing. Perez has since earned his Ph.D, and now, he teaches classes at Stateville Correctional Center, a maximum security prison south west of Chicago.
When he walks into class, he sees himself in a lot of his students.
"It might just be a chance of luck, that I'm not in there with them," he said. "Many of them come from my neighborhood. We grew up in the same context, I just was fortunate enough to have programs around me that took my life in another way."
Some research shows that incarcerated people who participate in higher education programs while serving time are less likely to go back to prison.
But Perez said these programs go deeper than those numbers. Where they really shine, he said, is the way they "get people rethinking about their environment and their worldview."
Jason Marks - the student at Augustana's program - knows that transformation well. He's been in and out of adult prisons nearly 10 times, mainly for theft and some battery charges.
So when he took classes in prison, he had a question for his professors: What do I do after release?
"I thrive in prison; I'm good at that, I've done it enough times. Where I need help is here and now, upon getting out. I said: 'Is there a path forward?'" Marks said. "It was breaking my mind - so many times back and forth inside of that hell."
Thanks to Augustana's program, Marks said he finally felt supported when he got released in June. This time, as he walked outside the prison gates, he saw his professors there to celebrate. No one had cared to wait for him like that before, he said.
"I finally feel like I found some inner peace," he said. "Since I've been out, I keep getting these waves of anxiety coming on - like I have this fear that something's wrong, but nothing's wrong. Because I'm just so used to something always being wrong."
Marks grew up surrounded by abuse and addiction, he said, with family members getting him drunk at 10 years old and high on cocaine by 15. And, in the past, he said he tended to end up on his family's couch, or right back to doing what landed him in the system.
But now, the Augustana program is giving him a chance at a different path.
Marks has heard the criticism that people in prison don't deserve to go to college, especially not for free. But he said everyone deserves an education and wishes the Pell Grant restoration could have happened long ago.
Breaking the cycle requires changing structures, hope
Student Tyrone Stone - who also participated in Augustana's program - said people need more than education to break the cycle. They need hope and support.
A photo of the back of the neck and shoulders of Tyrone Stone. He is wearing a blue windbreaker jacket. Slightly below the collar is the words born worthy in all caps. The letters are embroidered in white thread. Stone is wearing a purple beanie. In the background of the photo is a window with the blinds upon. The light is softly illuminating the photo.
Now out of prison, Tyrone Stone is working on creating a clothing line called Born Worthy, which he said is about giving people the confidence to be themselves. "We're all worthy of a second chance," he said. "We all go through things and I want people to know you're worthy of the energy that you were given."
Growing up on Chicago's West Side, Stone said he excelled in high school. After graduating, he moved to Lincoln, Illinois to enroll in college.
"In my family and my friends' eyes, I'm this guy that's doing really great - you know, 'He's the one that's going to help, he's the one that's going to change things,'" Stone said.
But his life took a turn. His father died in prison. Stone couldn't afford to stay at his college. He moved back to the Chicago area and took classes at a few other colleges, but he struggled.
Then he said he got caught up in the streets. In 2015, Stone went to prison for armed robbery. He got to go home earlier this year. He's now 35.
"Your thinking process has to change. Things you want to keep up with, you gotta let go. You can't be the same person," he said. "So I had to grow up really, really fast."
While in prison, Stone said he did what he could - he raised his kids over the phone, calling them and listening to their remote lessons when COVID-19 forced virtual learning. He taught some of his peers reading skills and said he participated in any program he could.
Stone got released early for good behavior. But even so, his life was on pause for about seven years. Time went by, chipping away his confidence and motivation.
That changed with his college program, he said. In his first class, he doubted that he could form genuine connections - but by the end, he said his classmates came rushing to hug him. They could tell when he was hurting or sad, he said, and they'd support him when he needed it.
"The camaraderie is a real thing, the learning is a real thing," he said. "It's a competitiveness like no other. A lot of people might think, you guys are just inmates. But there are some brilliant people behind bars."
During one class, he said they close-read the lyrics of "Strange Fruit" sung by Billie Holiday, a song protesting the lynching of Black Americans. The previous day, he said he had watched the trial for former Minneapolis police officer Derek Chauvin, who ultimately was convicted in 2021 for murdering George Floyd.
"It was not a coincidence to me. It was like, 'I have to wake up,'" he said. "I don't want to be a victim. I know George Floyd or any of these other victims didn't go outside and want to become a victim. I don't want to be a martyr in that way."
That's why he's motivated to change the systemic issues in the incarceration system, he said - including the way that people of color are disproportionately locked up. Two-thirds of people incarcerated in state-run prisons are people of color, based on the most recent public prison population data, while 76% of people in Illinois are white, according to the U.S. Census.
Stone said he's also concerned about young people who are incarcerated. When he got sent to Cook County Jail - a Chicagoland facility where thousands of people wait for their trials - Stone said he saw many teenagers there with him. He remembers hearing some say they didn't expect to live past 21, so why read a book?
"They looked like babies," he said. "They look like my babies - these are the same babies that I saw inside these cages."
So Stone now dreams of creating a program to support youth, and using the space of his old elementary school - Paderewski - to do it. Paderewski closed in 2013 when then-mayor Rahm Emanuel recommended shutting down 50 public schools, the majority serving primarily Black students.
Without his higher education program in prison, Stone said, he wouldn't have the belief in himself to come up with that idea.
"Once we have that beacon, that light, that hope, then we start to rebuild our personalities," Stone said. "We start to rebuild our purpose and create a complete self, someone that we can present to the world and say, 'I messed up, but look at what I'm doing now.'"
Prison education programs can help change perspectives
The programs can provide more than a boost to the spirit. In Marks' case, it helped him find his bearings after his release from East Moline Correctional Center late last month.
When he got out, Marks said he had about $30 to his name. Members of the Augustana program helped coordinate his housing and basic necessities. And they formed a support network around him.
That first day of release, Marks got a blanket, handmade for him. It was donated by a local church that the director of his program attends.
In a corner panel reads a message: "Welcome Home." He still keeps it on his bed.
"I'm surrounded by positive, smart, successful people, and I'm like - how is this happening?" Marks said. "It's sad that people are getting out that won't have this, and I didn't have this any other time."
Marks' professors call him up to get lunch. His previous roommate taught him how to use a computer, so Marks could type up his cover letter. And in the month since his release, Marks has landed a job.
These days, Marks said life looks different - he's no longer running frantically on a hamster wheel, looking at the world passing him by.
"I walk outside and everything's slowed down a little bit," he said. "I enjoy the fresh air and the trees look greener; I start laughing sometimes, like man, this is crazy."
It's surreal at times, Marks said, but it's an outlook he wants to keep. While at his transitional housing, Marks saw a neighbor across the street moving in. He decided to offer his assistance.
He helped get her stuff moved out of a storage unit and into her house. And one day, after he saw her son riding around in a scooter, Marks gave the boy a bike that had been donated to him.
"I felt like, 'I gotta do something for somebody, because everybody's doing things for me,'" he said.
He's also determined to do something for himself: Break the cycle and keep moving forward, off that hamster wheel.
Max Lubbers wrote this article for Chalkbeat Chicago
get more stories like this via email
It's Teacher Appreciation Week, and there's some mixed news when it comes to how well South Dakota is compensating it's teachers.
According to the National Education Association's annual Rankings and Estimates report, the national average teacher salary increased about 4% to nearly $70,000 a year between the 2021 and 2022 school years.
But adjusted for inflation, teachers still make 5% less than they did a decade ago.
President of the South Dakota Education Association Loren Paul noted that teachers there saw one of the highest salary increases across the country this year - a more than 5% jump.
"And the last three years we've seen more than what is required by the state," said Paul. "So hopefully we can continue that trend."
Despite the increase, South Dakota didn't shake its national salary rank of 49th, at just over $53,000.
The last time South Dakota's legislature enacted a law to increase teacher pay was in 2016, when it raised the state's sales tax by $0.005.
South Dakota's highest ranking in the report of 27th was for its starting salary, which averages $43,000. Paul said that helps bring in new educators, but doesn't do much to retain them.
"Overall salary increases are tied to retention," said Paul, "and if you're losing them off the top faster than you can bring them in the bottom, raising the average is what's important, not just the starting salary. "
He said teacher retention and shortages remain nationwide issues. North Dakota and Wyoming, which both rank higher, use state revenue from the fossil fuel industry to help pay teachers.
Disclosure: South Dakota Education Association contributes to our fund for reporting on Education. If you would like to help support news in the public interest,
click here.
get more stories like this via email
After hundreds of Ohio students gathered at Kent State University over the weekend to protest the conflict in Gaza, on the 54th anniversary of Vietnam War protests that left four students dead there, student organizers say their movement is gaining momentum.
Rachael Collyer - program director with the Ohio Student Association - said students condemn the violent mass arrest of protesters last month, and are escalating action.
Collyer said students are driven by a moral compass currently lacking in elected leadership.
"Students are clear that genocide is wrong and supporting genocide is wrong," said Collyer. "And they're organizing wherever they have influence to demand that their universities, those institutions reflect their values."
Protestors say they are calling on universities to divest from any financial connections to Israel, and to acknowledge the ongoing genocide in Gaza.
Critics of the protests argue the demonstrators are creating a hostile campus environment for Jewish students and supporters of Israel.
Collyer said student demonstrators are steadfast and focused on their cause, despite the violence.
"There has been such excellent organizing that's been done and done for years," said Collyer. "And we are here in solidarity as part of a vast movement of students and student organizations."
In a video address to the nation last week, President Joe Biden defended students' right to peaceful protests, but said there was "no right to chaos."
So far, an estimated two thousand people have been arrested at dozens of campuses across the nation.
Support for this reporting was provided by Media in the Public Interest and funded in part by the George Gund Foundation.
get more stories like this via email
By Kelly Field for The Hechinger Report.
Broadcast version by Nadia Ramlagan for Kentucky News Connection reporting for The Hechinger Report-Public News Service Collaboration
Haley Autumn Dawn Ann Crank thinks she might like to become a teacher. There’s a shortage of teachers in this corner of Kentucky, and Crank, who has eight siblings, gets kids.
“I just fit in with them,” Crank said during a shift one February day at the Big Blue Smokehouse, where she works as a waitress.
For now, the recent high school graduate is taking some education courses at the local community college. But to pursue a teaching degree at a public, comprehensive university, she’ll need to commute four hours roundtrip or leave the town she grew up in and loves.
Neither of those options is feasible — or even conceivable — for many residents of Hazard, a close-knit community of just over 5,000 tucked into the hills of Southeast Kentucky. Like many rural Americans, the people here are place-bound, their educational choices constrained by geography as much as by cost. With family and jobs tying them to the region, and no local four-year option, many settle for a two-year degree, or skip college altogether.
Until fairly recently, that decision made economic sense. Mining jobs were plentiful, and the money was good. But the collapse of the coal industry here and across Appalachia has made it harder to survive on a high school education. Today, just under half the residents over the age of 16 in Perry County, where Hazard sits, are employed; the national average is 63 percent. More than a quarter of the county’s residents are in poverty; the median household income is $45,000, compared to $75,000 nationally.
Now, spurred by concerns that low levels of college attainment are holding back the southeastern swath of the state, the Kentucky legislature is exploring ways to bring baccalaureate degrees to the region. The leading option calls for turning Hazard’s community and technical college into a standalone institution offering a handful of degrees in high-demand fields, like teaching and nursing.
The move to expand education here comes as many states are cutting majors at rural colleges and merging rural institutions, blaming funding shortfalls and steadily dwindling enrollments.
If successful, the new college could bring economic growth to one of the poorest and least educated parts of the country and serve as a model for the thousands of other “educational deserts” scattered across America. Proponents say it has the potential to transform the region and the lives of its battered but resilient residents.
But the proposal carries significant costs and risks. Building a residence hall alone would cost an estimated $18 million; running the new college would add millions more to the tab. Enrollment might fall short of projections, and the hoped-for jobs might not materialize. And if they didn’t, the newly-educated residents would likely take their degrees elsewhere, deepening the region’s “brain drain.”
“The hope is that if you build the institution, employers will come,” said Aaron Thompson, president of the Kentucky Council on Postsecondary Education, which has studied the idea on behalf of the legislature. “But it is somewhat of an experiment.”
Still, Thompson said, it’s an experiment worth exploring.
“To say you need to move to be prosperous is not a solution, and that’s pretty much been the solution since many of the coal mines disappeared,” he said.
At the airport in Lexington, Kentucky, there’s a sign greeting passengers that reads, “You’ve landed in one smart city.” Lexington, the sign proclaims, is ranked #11 among larger cities in the share of the population with a bachelor’s degree or higher.
But drive a couple hours to the southeast, and the picture changes. Only 13 percent of the residents of Perry County over the age of 25 hold a bachelor’s degree or higher, well below the national average of 34 percent.
Michelle Ritchie-Curtis, the co-principal of Perry County Central High School, said the problem isn’t convincing kids to go to college, it’s keeping them there. Though nearly two-thirds of the county’s high school graduates continue on to college, just over a third of those who enroll in public four-years graduate within six years, compared to close to 60 percent statewide, according to the Council on Postsecondary Education.
In Hazard, as in many rural places, kids grow up hearing the message that they need to leave to succeed. But many return after a year or two, citing homesickness or the high cost of college, Ritchie-Curtis said. Sometimes, they feel ashamed about abandoning their aspirations. They take off a semester, and it becomes years, she said.
Those who make it to graduation and leave tend to stay gone, discouraged by the region’s limited job opportunities. This exodus, and the lack of a four-year college nearby, have hampered Hazard’s ability to attract employers who might fill the void left by the decline of coal, said Zach Lawrence, executive director of the Hazard-Perry County Economic Development Alliance.
Ritchie-Curtis said that having a local option would solve the homesickness problem and could save students money in room and board. It could also help stem the region’s brain drain and alleviate a teaching shortage that has forced the school to hire a growing number of career changers, she added.
To Jennifer Lindon, the president of Hazard Community and Technical College, “it all boils down to equity.”
“If we can provide a [four-year] education, and make it affordable, perhaps we can break the cycle of poverty in Southeast Kentucky,” she said.
Converting Hazard’s two-year college into a four-year institution wasn’t among the options initially considered by the Kentucky General Assembly. When lawmakers asked the state’s Council on Postsecondary Education to study the feasibility of bringing four-year degrees to Southeast Kentucky, it offered three approaches: building a new public university; creating a satellite campus of an existing comprehensive university; or acquiring a private college to convert into a public one.
But the council concluded in its report that each of those alternatives was “in some way problematic.” A new university would be prohibitively expensive and might fail; a new branch campus could suffer the same enrollment challenges as existing satellites; and acquiring a private college would be legally complicated.
The council considered the possibility of allowing the community college to offer baccalaureate degrees — something a growing number of states permit — but worried that doing so would lead to “mission creep” and “intense competition” for the state’s dwindling number of high school graduates.
Instead, the council recommended that the legislature study the idea of making Hazard’s community college a standalone institution offering both technical degrees and a few bachelor’s programs “in line with workforce demand.” Starting small, the council suggested, would allow policymakers and college leaders to gauge student demand before building out baccalaureate offerings.
That approach makes sense to Sen. Robert Stivers, the president of the Kentucky Senate, and the sponsor of the bill that commissioned the council’s study.
“I don’t think you can just jump off the cliff into the lake,” he said. “You need to be a little more measured.”
But Andrew Koricich, executive director of the Alliance for Research on Regional Colleges at Appalachian State University, said the region’s residents deserve a comprehensive college. He likened the limited offerings envisioned by the council to former President George W. Bush’s “soft bigotry of low expectations.”
“There’s this idea that rural people should be happy they have anything,” he said.
Koricich pointed to the recent merger of Martin Methodist University, a private religious college, with the University of Tennessee system as proof that the legal hurdles to acquiring a private college aren’t insurmountable.
But Thompson, the CPE president, said that the private colleges in southeast Kentucky are located too far from most residents and the schools weren’t interested in being acquired, anyway. He argued that while a comprehensive university might be “ideal,” it wasn’t realistic.
“In an ideal world, I’d be young again with a great back,” he said. “But in reality, I work with what I’ve got. And that’s what we’re doing here.”
When Stivers was growing up in southeastern Kentucky in the 60’s and 70’s, coal was king. A high school graduate could get a job paying $15 an hour — good money at the time — without ever setting foot in a college classroom, he said.
With mining jobs so abundant, “there wasn’t a value placed on education,” Stivers recalled.
Coal production peaked in eastern Kentucky in 1990, and has been on the decline ever since. Today, there are just over 400 individuals employed in coal jobs in Perry County.
The shrinking of the sector has had ripple effects across Appalachia, hurting industries that support mining and local businesses that cater to its workers. Many residents have migrated to urban centers, seeking work, and once-thriving downtowns have been hollowed out.
By the middle of the last decade, most of the buildings in downtown Hazard were either empty or occupied by attorneys and banks. The only place to gather was a hole-in-the-wall bar called the Broken Spoke Lounge, recalled Luke Glaser, a city commissioner and assistant principal at Hazard High School. When the Grand Hotel burned down, in 2015, a sense of resignation settled in, Glaser said.
The region has also been hard hit by opioids, which were aggressively marketed to rural doctors treating miners for injuries and black lung disease. In 2017, Perry County had the highest opioid abuse hospitalization rate in the nation.
Then, in 2021, and again in 2022, the region suffered severe flooding, which washed away homes and took the lives of almost 50 residents of Southeast Kentucky.
Yet Hazard is also in the midst of what Glaser calls an “Appalachian Renaissance,” a revival being led by 20- and 30-somethings who have come home or moved to the area in recent years. Though Appalachian Kentucky lost 2.2 percent of its population between 2010 and 2019, Hazard grew by 13 percent.
A decade ago, a group of long-time residents and young people began meeting with a mission to revitalize Hazard’s main street. The group, which called itself InVision Hazard, hired a downtown coordinator and brought free Wi-Fi and improved signage to the downtown area.
Over the past four-and-a-half years, close to 70 new businesses have opened within a three-mile radius of downtown, and only eight have closed, according to Betsy Clemons, executive director of the Hazard Perry County Chamber of Commerce. There’s an independent bookstore, an arts alliance that will put on seven full-length productions this year, and a toy store — all run by residents who grew up in Hazard and returned as adults.
The Grand Hotel, which stood as a burned-out shell for years, has finally been torn down, making way for an outdoor entertainment park with space for food trucks and a portable stage, and plans for live entertainment on Friday nights.
As the downtown has transformed, collective feelings of apathy and resignation have given way to a new sense of possibility, Glaser said. Brightly colored murals reading “We Can Do This,” and “Together” adorn the sides of two downtown buildings.
To Mandi Sheffel, the owner of Read Spotted Newt bookstore, the creation of a four-year college feels like a logical next step for a place that was recently dubbed “a hip destination for young people” (a description that both delights and amuses people here).
“In every college town I’ve been to, there’s a vibe, a pride in the community,” she said.
These days, Hazard is feeling that pride, too.
On the vocational campus of Hazard Community and Technical College in February, Jordan Joseph and Austin Cox, recent high school grads, stood alongside a tractor trailer truck, pointing out its parts. In as little as four weeks, they could become commercially licensed truck drivers, a career that pays close to $2,000 a week.
Both men followed dads and grandads into the profession and said they couldn’t imagine sitting in a classroom for four years after high school. Like the sign on the side of the truck they were working on said, they want to “Get in, Get Out, and Get to Work.”
Inside one of the campus’ labs, a pair of aspiring electricians said they doubted many local residents would be able to afford a four-year degree.
“I don’t think you’d get a lot of people,” said Walker Isaacs, one of the students.
Their skepticism underscores a key risk in creating a four-year college in a place that’s never had one: There’s no guarantee students will enroll. Larger forces — including a looming decline in the number of high school graduates, an improved labor market, and public doubts about the value of higher education — could dampen demand for four-year degrees, forcing the college to either cut costs or seek state funding to cover its losses.
Recognizing this risk -and the possibility that employers won’t show up, either – the Council declined to give an “unqualified endorsement” of the idea of turning the community college into a four-year institution, saying further study was needed. In February, Sen. Stivers introduced a bill that calls on the council to survey potential students and employers about the idea and to provide more detailed estimates of its potential costs and revenues.
Converting the college could also cause enrollment to fall at the state’s existing public and private four-years. Eastern Kentucky University, the hardest hit, could lose as many as 250 students in the seventh year after conversion, the council estimated in its report. While the council did not examine the possible effect on private colleges in the region, the president of Union College, Marcia Hawkins, said in a statement that, “Depending on the majors added, such a move could certainly impact enrollment at our southern and eastern Kentucky institutions.”
But on the main campus of Hazard Community and Technical College, there’s growing excitement about the prospect of the two-year college becoming a four-year.
Ashley Smith, who is studying to become a registered nurse, said the proposed conversion would make it easier for her to earn the bachelor’s degree she’s always wanted. With three kids at home, she can’t manage an hours-long commute to and from class.
Another nursing student, Lakyn Bolen, said she’d be more likely to continue her education if she could do so from home. She left Hazard once to finish a four-year degree, and is reluctant to do so again.
“It’s not fun going away,” Bolen said. “We definitely need more nursing opportunities here.”
Dylon Baker, assistant vice president of workforce initiatives for Appalachian Regional Healthcare, agrees. His nonprofit, which operates 14 hospitals in Kentucky and West Virginia, has struggled with staffing shortages and spent millions on contract workers. The shortages have forced the system to shutter some beds, reducing access to care in a region with high rates of diabetes, cancer and heart disease.
“We are taking care of the sickest of the sickest,” Baker said. “We have to give them access to quality healthcare.”
Hazard’s community college already offers some higher-level degrees, such as nursing, through partnerships with four-year public and private colleges in Kentucky. But most of the programs are online-only, and many students prefer in-person learning, said Deronda Mobelini, chief student affairs officer. Others lack access to broadband internet or can’t afford it.
If the conversion goes through, the college will continue to offer online baccalaureates and a wide range of certificates and associate degrees, said Lindon, the HCTC president. She envisions a system of “differential tuition” where students seeking four-year degrees would pay less during the first two years of their programs.
Though the college would still cater to commuters, a residence hall would attract students from a wider area and alleviate a housing shortage made more acute by the recent floods, Lindon said.
Ultimately, the future of the institution will rest with the Kentucky legislature, which must decide if it wants to spend some of its continuing budget surplus on bringing four-year degrees to an underserved corner of the state.
But Lindon is already imagining the possibilities, and the Appalachian culture course that she’d make mandatory for students seeking bachelor’s degrees.
“For too long, we’ve been taught to hide or even be ashamed of where we’re from,” she said. “We want to teach young people to be proud of our Appalachian heritage.”
Kelly Field wrote this article for The Hechinger Report.
Support for this reporting was provided by Lumina Foundation.
get more stories like this via email