[Fjolsvith]

>In reality, a large swath of the incarcerated population is not motivated to pursue additional education, or really any program that might help them get their lives back on track.

Maybe your point is valid for some state prisons, but in my experience it is not that true.

During my state incarceration in Alaska, the education directors had me develop and teach computer classes. There were waiting lists of inmates who wanted to take them. I taught basic computer knowledge (hardware and operating systems), Office program usage (Word, Excel, Powerpoint and Access), and VB.NET programming.

I tried to get the University of Alaska to allow me to take some courses by correspondence, but they were not interested. All I could do was get one of the math professors to send me a few dated textbooks.

In the federal prison system, there were Vocational Training classes that were always full. I took the V.T. Drafting course in one and then tutored it. That class taught 4 months of board drafting and then 6 months of AutoCAD. It had about 45 students enrolled all the time. Sadly, I discovered on release that drafting is no longer a profession due to the new modelling packages that enable engineers to lay out their drawings nearly instantly. However, I can still read blueprints, and can whip one up in a jiffy when a customer needs one for a shed they want to buy from me.

There were no options for college classes in the federal system without having some wealth to pay for them.