Angola prison: The entrance to the Louisiana State Penitentiary has a guard house that controls entry into the compound with seop sign, three white buildings and brick sign —the sign says "Louisiana State Penitentiary" and "Burl Cain, Warden"

Q&A: From Louisiana prisoner to Louisiana State University graduate

Within months of his release from a lifetime imprisonment sentence in Louisiana's 18,000-acre prison in Angola, La., Andrew Hundley, then 34, enrolled in junior college and founded the Louisiana Parole Project, a nonprofit focused on advocacy and reentry for former juvenile lifers. Under a 2016 U.S. Supreme Court ruling, Hundley, who’d been sentenced in 1997, when he was 15, was released after serving 19 years at Angola. Hundley had the chance to start over, finish college and start a family. But many of the men and women he works with through the Parole Project are older and entered the Louisiana prison system at a time when there were no educational opportunities, especially for lifers. 

White woman with long dark hair sits at a round table, teaching juvenile offenders, whose faces are not fully shown, inside a New Jersey juvenile facility.

At detention facilities offering high school diplomas, college classes are seen as a next step

Four years ago, a social worker from the Middlesex County Juvenile Detention Center asked English professor Alexandra Fields, of nearby Middlesex College, if she would be able to provide college programming for youth incarcerated at that New Jersey facility. Beyond helping them earn their high school diplomas, it offered nothing more  educationally to those graduates. In mid-February 2022, 20 young men across eight of the facilities started working on an associate’s degree from Middlesex, becoming the first such cohort in New Jersey to be on a path toward a college degree.

Fewer DACA Students Enrolling in California Colleges

With President Donald Trump announcing his intent to end the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program, college students in California fear this will affect their status in the United States.

New Online Service Allows College Students to Compare Financial Aid Data Across Country

This week, the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) launched a beta version of the Financial Aid Comparison Shopper, an online service designed to help prospective and current college students make financial plans for their post-secondary schooling. The new service allows users to access financial aid information as it pertains to more than 7,500 colleges and universities across the United States. Using data collected by official government statistical agencies, the Financial Aid Comparison Shopper evaluates a wide range of financial information, from estimated student loan payment totals to college-specific data such as graduation and retention rates, as well as federal student loan default percentages. Additionally, the new service includes a “Military Benefit Calculator” that allows service members and veterans to estimate military tuition assistance and GI Bill aid. Last fall, the CFPB launched the “Know Before You Owe” student loan project, unveiling a Financial Aid Shopping Sheet draft that served as a precursor to the Financial Aid Comparison Shopper service.

Experts Speak About Addiction Recovery for Young Adults

At the National Collegiate Recovery Conference Wednesday at Kennesaw State University, Michael Fishman, Director of the Young Adult Program at Talbott Recovery Campus in Atlanta, neatly summed up everything he had learned in 22 years of treating addiction in young adults. The recurring theme of his keynote address: It’s complicated. “Most young adults are generally poly-substance abusers,” he said. They aren’t just using marijuana; they’re also drinking, Fishman says. It’s not just opioids, it’s opioids and anti-depressants or any other combination.

Meth Project Ads Effective at Preventing Drug Use, Study Says

The Meth Project’s graphic ads are effective at deterring meth use, according to new research by the W.P. Carey School of Business at Arizona State University. The new study, “How Disgust Enhances the Effect of Fear Appeals,” compared ads that rely on disgust and fear with ads that use fear alone as the deterring element. Researchers showed a series of three ads to a group of college students. Each of the ads had an identical message, but the images were different. Those that relied only on an element of fear did not lead to immediate changes in attitudes or behavior.