Legislators surprised inmates get state grants for LU program

Some state prison inmates enrolled in classes taught by Liberty University at a correctional facility in Chatham qualify for state tuition grants.

Several state legislators said they didn’t know about that when they voted to set up the pilot program.

About 20 full-time students in the program at Green Rock Correctional Center pay for the classes with the Virginia Tuition Assistance Grant, said Gary Phillips, LU’s director of prison outreach.

The coursework is administered through Liberty’s distance-learning program with a secure server and does not allow inmates any access to the Internet.

At $3,200 per undergraduate student per year, the grants, known as TAGs, mean about $64,000 in state money supports student inmates in the program.

The grants have long been made available to Virginia residents who are full-time students at state private colleges and universities that qualify for them.

Del. Kathy Byron, R-Campbell County, whose amendment to the state budget bill established the LU program in this year’s General Assembly, said she wasn’t aware that prisoners would qualify for the grants.

Del. Watkins Abbitt, I-Appomattox, and Del. Beverly Sherwood, R-Winchester, also said they didn’t know there was a tuition-grant aspect to the LU program.

Abbitt is a member of the assembly’s Appropriations subcommittee on Public Safety, which gave the amendment a hearing that sent it on its way to approval. Sherwood is chairwoman of the subcommittee.

Gov. Timothy M. Kaine, who proposed an unsuccessful amendment that would have opened up the program to other universities, said through a spokesman that he, too, did not know about the grant eligibility.

“It is unusual to use money for this,” Kaine spokesman Gordon Hickey said, but “the governor doesn’t want to take any kind of stand on this right now.”

All three of the legislators said they expect to revisit the LU program during the upcoming session of the General Assembly. As a two-year pilot program, its results were originally scheduled to be reported to the assembly in 2010.

“I am looking into the TAG issue and will address it through budget language next year,” Byron said in an e-mail.

“If the reports indicate there is value and cost-saving in our correction system for these programs then it should be addressed” through the state’s Department of Correctional Education “rather than the TAG program,” Byron said.

Correctional education teaches courses, often focusing on technical skills, at most prison facilities. Many of the courses do not award college credits to the inmates, as the LU program does.

Ronald Godwin, executive vice president of Liberty, said the TAG grants mean LU is receiving $130 per credit hour from the prison courses, compared with the $275 it charges most students.

The university paid all the costs of starting the computer classes at Green Rock, Godwin said.

“Liberty set up the classroom, equipped it and paid for secure telephone lines,” Godwin said.

“All the costs of setup were borne by Liberty,” Godwin said. “That’s what we said we were going to pay for and we did do that.”

The university declined to say how much it invested in the setup.

Byron’s presentation to the legislative subcommittee stressed Liberty’s promise to pay for setting up the program.

No one asked about potential associated costs, such as tuition.

“I never gave the TAG program a thought, and had no idea whether the inmates would be eligible to receive funds,” Byron said.

Godwin said the university made clear its intentions to seek TAG funds during its earlier communications with the Department of Correctional Education.

Liberty University signed a memorandum of agreement with state prison officials “and we lived up to the exact letter of the law,” Godwin said.

“The warden at Green Rock, as of yesterday, was very pleased with the program,” Godwin said Thursday.

TAG grants are available to full-time students at 32 of the state’s accredited private, non-profit colleges, including Liberty University, Sweet Briar College and Randolph College locally.

The grants can go to “a student who is found to have Virginia domicile (address) for one full year,” said Lee Andes, assistant director for financial aid with the State Council of Higher Education for Virginia, which administers the grants. “The grant cannot be awarded to students in a degree program that is for religious training or theological education.”

Funds for the grant are distributed directly to each participating school, he said.

“Technically, it’s a grant to the student,” he said. “But we write one check to the college to accommodate all their students. That’s how we apply it.”

This year, the General Assembly approved more than $60 million for the grants, which are given as $3,200 to each eligible undergraduate student who applies on time, Andes said. Graduate students are awarded $1,900.

Liberty University’s 3,800 eligible students are slated to receive nearly $4.4 million in funds from TAG grants for the fall semester alone, Andes said.

Liberty receives much more funding from TAG grants than any other college, Andes said in an e-mail.

“For fall 2008, Liberty is easily larger than the next three institutions combined: in order, Lynchburg College, Bridgewater College, and Ferrum College,” he wrote.

For the fall, Lynchburg College would receive nearly $1.8 million for about 1,300 students, Sweet Briar College would get $478,000 for about 320 students, and Randolph College $332,000 for about 235 students, Andes said.

Andes said as long as they meet the other eligibility requirements, inmates also would be able to receive the state funds.

“There’s no restriction based on whether a person is incarcerated,” he said. “The problem most (inmate) students have is being able to enroll in a program that is eligible. Liberty has found a way to bring an eligible program to the student.”

Those students also would need to have a history of Virginia residency prior to their incarceration, he said.

“Just because they’re incarcerated in Virginia does not make them Virginia residents,” he said. Students in distance-learning programs also may be eligible for TAG grants, Andes said.

“There are several distance programs that we have approved,” he said, including the one at Liberty.

Each student is responsible for a one-time $50 application fee and a $150 per semester technology fee, he said.

Although Phillips couldn’t disclose the program’s startup cost, he provided a few details.

“We bought the laptop computers, 20 of those,” he said. “We had to put a secure server in, and the Department of Corrections picked up some of the costs of some of the hardware items — some of the cables and wires and things like that.”

Shaun Redgate, LU lead project coordinator for the initiative, said Liberty plans to eventually extend the program into other Virginia state prisons, but right now is working to “fine-tune” the prototype at Green Rock, he said.

“We expect (enrollment) to grow as word gets out,” he said.

“We’ve received calls already from other states.”