Higher Education in Prison

Since first publishing the Call for Papers for this volume (2017), we have spent more than two years “ruminating” with the twelve authors who have contributed to this project and many others in the higher education in prison community who have generously offered feedback, posed questions (and some challenges) and most notably, we express our gratitude to the instructors who have brought these readings into their classrooms, to incarcerated and non-incarcerated students, and rigorously engaged the ideas offered. In this final essay, we touch on three themes that we believe are relevant to the present moment and purpose of this volume and that are central to field building efforts: equity in higher education, the quality and “promise” of Pell grant restoration, and how and why we should foster a community of scholarship and practice.