PIECING TOGETHER A COLLEGE EDUCATION
BEHIND BARS
Part Two

E-Mail   by Jon Marc Taylor, MA   Bio/Address

The biggest single expense with earning a college degree

behind bars is the cost of tuition.

 

At presents the average undergraduate tuition fee is $125.00 per credit hour a two-year Associate degree requiring an average of 60-semester credit hours, and a four-year Bachelor degree requiring a minimum of 120-semester credit hours. By this general outline, tuition fees alone will run you $7500 for Associate degree to more than $15, 000 for a Baccalaureate. The pain, however, does not end there!

Beside several hundred dollars in incidental costs, such as enrollment, term registration, shipping and handling expenses and graduation fees, there is the cost of texts. Books will be your second greatest expense in earning a degree in the joint. On average. expect 'to spend $90,00 per course for the necessary texts and study guides. With twenty (three-hour) classes for an Associates and forty courses for a Bachelors, figure an spending an additional $1800 to $3600 for textbooks.

All tolled, even with "room and board" and medical (such as it is) paid for by Uncle Sam or Cousin Commonwealth, earning a college degree solely via traditional correspondence opportunities behind bars will cost you $9000 to $20,000, That is if you have a deep stash or a rich sugar daddy to tap, are uncreative to lazy, and can not hustle your way out of a wet paper bag.

The purpose of this series is to show you how to piece together a college degree for less than two thousand dollars, and a bachelors diploma for less than five grand. Admittedly, not chump change in the penitentiary by long shot, but possible to finance if its spread out over several years. If there is one thing we prisoners have in abundance in the American "gulag archipelago," it is time on our hands; might as well work the system as it works us over too!

 

Literally, thousands of colleges and universities in North America grant credit towards their degree programs based upon various "testing services" examinations. These teats are meant to represent the final exam in a particular college course. Passing the test with a high enough score (which can vary from school to school) and you can be granted equivalent credit as if you had taken the complete class at full cost. For one-tenth of the expense, and a month of intensive study, you can document "transferable" college credits, applicable to virtually any degree program you choose.

Few schools, however, will grant degrees singularly based upon exam credit accumulations, thus necessitating the enrollment in some courses (usually one-quarter the required degree hours) at whatever college you are seeking a diploma. This means you will have to juggle university level credits from various sources, and take some traditional correspondence courses to earn your degree. It is well worth the effort, though.

Considering our original projection of $20,000 for a Bachelors degree, imagine earning, three-quarters of that baccalaureate at next to no cost. We are already down to five grand for that diploma, and as you will see, we can redoes that even further.

 

The value of testing service exams is that far a small fee, usually less than $50, you can earn from three to thirty semester hours of academic credit. In our example, this translates into a savings of $400 to $4000, for the cost of less than half the standard fee of one-hour of tuition!

Each college or university sets its own transfer credit policy as to what courses and testing service exams to accept, and what grades and scores are necessary for acceptance. When you contact a school you are interested in seeking a degree from and intend on transferring testing service exam credits, you will want to ask:

1.  what exam services and in what subjects do they accept;

2.  what scores are needed for equivalent credit;

3. if accepted, do such credits allow you to skip one or more introductory courses;

4. are there any additional requirements before credit is granted?

There are three major testing services (CLEP, DANTES & Regent College Examinations) administering exams. These are offered at testing centers all over the country on many dates year round, and all have procedures for institutionalized individuals to participate. You will need to coordinate with your education office, but these exams are not significantly different to proctor than standard correspondence finals. If your prison permits distance education participation, there should be no problem.

The College-Level Examination Program (CLEP) is recognized by over 2,800 colleges and universities (SEE Sidebar 1). It is probably the most respected and accepted testing service as it is backed by the century-old College Entrance Examination Board. Over four million students have utilized the CLEP program. These are challenging and comprehensive exams. Credit is earned only if you can demonstrate concentrated subject knowledge acquired through prior or independent study, through cultural pursuits or special interests, or through professional development, such as in a military occupation specialty or company training programs.

CLEP exams cover subjects from business to science, offering five General Exams and twenty-nine Subject Exams (SEE Sidebar 2), The General Examinations cover material taught in courses that most students take as requirements in the first two years of college. Each test is 90-minutes long, and except for English Composition with Essay, consisting entirely of multiple-choice questions to be answered in two separate timed sections. Six-semester hours of credit (in our formula worth approximately $900) are usually awarded for satisfactory scores on each General Exam.

Each Subject Examination covers material taught in an undergraduate course with a similar title at most colleges and universities. A college usually grants the same amount of credit to students earning satisfactory scores on the CLEP exams as it grants to students completing the same course at its school. Many Subject Examinations are designed to correspond to one-semester (3-credit) courses; however, some correspond to full-year (6-credit) or two-year (12-credit) courses. Each exam is 90-minutes long and is composed of multiple choice questions to be answered in two separately timed sections.

DSST ("DANTES" Subject Standardized Tests) is a nationally recognized testing program (originally developed exclusively for military personnel, thus the acronym DANTES, i.e., Defense Activity for Non-Traditional Education Support) that gives you the opportunity to receive college credit for learning outside the traditional classroom. Over 80,000 individuals take DSSTs annually. More than 1,200 colleges and universities currently award credit for DSSTs. You can choose from thirty-seven different test titles in the areas of Social Sciences, Business, Mathematics, Applied Technology, Humanities and Physical Science (SEE Sidebar 3). DSSTs are untimed (usually 90-minutes), multiple-choice tests, with no scoring penalty for guessing (SEE Sidebar 4),

Regents College Examinations (formerly known as ACT-PEP exams) have been offered for three decades, and are accepted by nearly 1,000 colleges and universities. The forty-two multiple-choice, essay, and mixed format course exams cover the areas of Arts & Sciences, Business, Education, and Nursing at the Associate and Baccalaureate levels (SEE Sidebar 5), While this is as much as three--times or more the cost compared to CLEP and DANTES exams, the diversity of upper-level courses, and nursing specialty exams, provide testing options that the other services do not. These exams are worth considering for junior and senior--level students, or those only a few credits short of graduating.

 

As yon can see, these exams can save you a significant amount of money in earning a number of college credits. Moreover, the testing services have fee waiver programs for special situation" individuals, which can include prisoner-students. The CLEP program in particular bracts these waivers to prisoners; however, these services have a limited budget for such exemptions, and they are pretty much a first come, first served basis. Apply early in the year for the best chance of fee waiver approval. If denied by one service, apply to another. Remember: "no" means "not now," not forever.

Even with free testing, there is another expense you need to be concerned with, and that is of study materials. Each of the services offer free Fact Sheets and Study Guides along with sample questions (SEE Sidebar 5). CLEP ($18.00) and Regents College Examinations ($18.95) offer comprehensive study guides covering all of their 30-plus exams, with sample questions for all, test taking tips and answer rationales for multiple-choice exams, procedures for getting university credit, and study resource recommendations.

It is these recommended study resources where you can save yourself even more by creatively managing access to the preparation textbooks. Each study guide suggests half-a-dozen of the routinely used classroom texts covering the exam's material.

1. Check your prison library. Most libraries eventually collect various texts such as: sociology, psychology, mathematics, history, physics and literature anthologies, etc. If they don't, start requesting that they acquire them, specifically suggesting the titles listed in the study guides.

2. Once newer editions of these textbooks are issued (about every three years), the previous editions are deeply discounted by the publisher. For a few bucks yon can pick them up from close out catalogs, without significantly sacrificing information covered on the exams. There are also several published specific preparation guides and learning packages with full-length sample tests. Request that your librarian order these as well.

3. Working through your librarian or education director, form a committee, writing to area colleges sad universities, seeking donations of department sad professorial discarded texts. (We built, cost free, a multi-thousand volume reference library far the Ball State University program at the Indiana State reformatory with such a donation strategy.)

From test-fee waivers. free study guides to off the library shelf textbooks, you can earn anywhere from three to ninety (to even possibly all the necessary) credit hours applicable to a degree program at virtually no cost. A little bit of timely hustle by applying for fee waivers early to the term, and creative management of yo0ur prison library (even if you have to stock it yourself), you can piece together the major portion of your degree's required course hours for no money. By forming a study group in your joint, not only can you increase your prospects for passing the exams, but leverage your available resources with the collective power of your brain trust. You can begin by collecting the hundred-plus free study guides from the CLEP, DANTES, and Regents College Examinations services, which will serve as the foundation of your reference library. The rest is limited by your capacity to dream.

Finally, just how difficult are these exams? As Dr. John Bear relates, in his many books on distance education, this is a subjective question. Many people here commented that these exams are "a lot easier than they had expected." This is true more so for more mature, life-experienced students, rather than your eighteen-year-old high school graduate. Cramming has been proven to be an effective study strategy for some. Dr. Bear tells of a man who crammed for, took, and passed three general GRE exams, earning the equivalent of ninety-credits. The man then took five CLEP General Examinations in a row, earning an additional thirty-hours. Applying them to an accredited school, he received a Bachelor's degree for less then twenty-hours of exam time. Admittedly, it is an extreme example, but effective and demonstrably possible.

Do some research, collect your materials, take the self-scoring sample tests, and see haw you do. If you do well,, go ahead and take the exam. If you score 'so-so,’ hit the teats, do some cramming. and then go for it. And if you fail miserably on the sample test, perhaps other means outlined in the rest of this series may be more favorable to earning you a college degree.

If yon take an exam and do not score high enough for credit, you can retake the same subject exam again in six months. A11 the wiser for your experience. and is credit for your persistence. Never give up. Never surrender your future. In the words of Marabel Morgan:

"Persistence is the twin sister of excellence,

One is a matter of quality; the other,

a matter of time."

 

The next article in this series will cover end-of-course exams, life experience learning, and credit banks.

 

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

 

Jon Marc Taylor received the Robert F. Kennedy and The Nation/I.F. Stone Journalism Awards for his reporting on "Pell Grants for Prisoners," and is the author of the Prisoners' GUERRILLA HANDBOOK To Correspondence Programs in the U .S. & Canada: $23.95 (--$3.00 discount for prisoners) from Audenreed Press, PMB 103 / POB 1305, Brunswick, ME 04011 / 1-888-315-0582

 

Sidebar 1 - TESTING SERVICES ADDRESSES:

CLEP Exams P.O. Box 6600 Princeton, NJ 08541 (Exams $46.00)	Regents College Examinations  7 Columbia Circle  Albany, NY 12203  (Exams $40.00+ per credit hour)
DANTES Program  P.O. Box 6604  Princeton, NJ 08541  (Exams $35.00)	Graduate Record Examinations (GRE) P.O. Box 955 Princeton, NJ 08541

 

Sidebar 2 - CLEP EXAMINATIONS

These exams measure your knowledge of subjects most students are required to study in the first two years of college. Depending on your school's CLEP policy, satisfactory scores on all five of these 90-minute exams can earn you up to a year of college credit.

 

* English Composition

* Humanities

* College Mathematics

* Natural Sciences

* Social Sciences & History

 

Successful completion of one or more of these 90-minute exams can prove to the school of your choice that you've mastered that subject at the college level.

Business: Composition & Literature: * Information Systems & Computer Applications * Principles of Management  * Principles of Accounting * Introductory Business Law * Principles of Marketing      History & Sciences:    * American Government    * Am History I: Early Colonization to 1877     * History of U S II 1865 to the Present    * Human Growth & Development    * Intro to Psychology     * Principles of Macroeconomics    * Principles of Microeconomics    * Intro Sociology     * Western Civilization I: Ancient Near East to 1648    * Western Civilization II: 1648 to the Present

Composition & Literature: * American Literature * Analysis & Interpretation Literature * Freshmann College Composition * English Literature     Science & Mathematics:    * Calculus w/ Elementary Functions    * College Algebra * Trigonometry * College Algebra Trigonometry * General Biology * General Chemistry   Foreign n Languages * College-Level French  * College-Level German Language  * College-Level Spanish

 

 

Sidebar 3 - DANTES Subject Standardized Tests:

Many adults returning to college find that the lack of confidence is often the greatest hurdle to overcome. DANTE tests can show you how successfully you can compete in the college environment because your performance is compared with the performance of college students worldwide.

 

 

Sidebar 4 - REGENTS COLLEGE EXAMINATIONS:

Select the Regents College Examinations that work with your degree program whether you're enrolled at Regents College or elsewhere.

(Author retains all second serial / reprint rights)

Jon Marc would appreciate any comments you would care to share. E-Mail 

Part I

Part II - you are here

Part III

Part IV

Back

Home/Cover/Table of Contents