UC Riverside will soon join the 1 percent of U.S. colleges and universities offering a Bachelor of Arts program within the confines of a prison.

Beginning next fall, incarcerated students at the Norco California Rehabilitation Center, or Norco CRC, will be able to earn a Bachelor of Arts degree in Education, Society, and Human Development, with a concentration in Social Justice. This prison in Riverside County is about 50 miles east of downtown Los Angeles.

The program will be offered to roughly 25 students who have earned an associate’s degree (or equivalent) already offered inside the prison by Norco College, one of three community colleges operated by the Riverside Community College District. UCR now has 36 applicants from students at Norco CRC, all of whom have applied as transfer students. 

“We are extending access to a Bachelor of Arts degree to a highly motivated group of students who are working very hard to turn their lives around through a UC college education. We believe a program like this is well overdue in Inland Southern California,” said Joi Spencer, dean of UCR’s School of Education. 

Classes will be taught by faculty from the School of Education and the College of Humanities, Arts, and Social Sciences, who will receive specialized training and support for their participation. The courses offered will be part of UCR’s already-approved curriculum for an education major, and will be taught in the Norco prison by faculty members from the School of Education and the College of Humanities, Arts, and Social Sciences.

The Norco BA program is an expansion of UCR’s mission to bring a world-class college education to students of color and who come from disadvantaged backgrounds, said Amos Lee, an assistant professor of teaching in UCR’s School of Education and co-founding director of UCR’s Leveraging Inspiring Futures Through Educational Degrees (LIFTED) program.

“Extending this opportunity to students behind bars is a logical and prescient expansion of UCR’s

mission, further expanding its reach in the target area of Inland Southern California,” Lee said.

This will be the second bachelor’s degree program offered inside a prison by a UC campus. It will build on the success of UC Irvine’s LIFTED program, which launched in fall 2022 at Ronald J. Donovan Correctional Facility near the Mexico border, southeast of San Diego.

UCR has secured a seed grant of $150,000 from the UCI LIFTED program as well as $25,000 from the Michelson 20MM Foundation for the UCR BA program within the Norco prison.

The students will pay normal tuition fees, but these costs are expected to be covered through federal Pell grants, which Congress expanded to incarcerated students in 2020, as well as through the UC’s Blue and Gold Opportunity financial aid plan.

At least 95 percent of those incarcerated in California will return to our communities, Lee said. Providing access to a UC college degree can enhance opportunities available after they are released, which can allow for economic security and better lives for these students and their families.  

Farah Godrej, co-founding director UCR LIFTED and professor of political science, added that the Master Plan for Higher Education in California, adopted in 1960, called for balancing “fostering excellence with guaranteeing educational access for all.” But the promise of a college education for “anyone from anywhere” was, until recently, not extended to California’s many prisons.

“We seek to extend ‘access’ by including those who are incarcerated, so that they too may enjoy the benefits of a first-rate college education offered by the University of California,” Godrej said.

Learn more about the UCR LIFTED program.

The top intro picture shows prospective UCR students in the California Rehabilitation Center working with UCR faculty.  Photo by Kolapo Soretire/NCRC.