A reader writes:
Important to note from that article on San Quentin is the immediately preceding sentence to your excerpt: "A plethora of academic courses are still offered, as committed faculty and graduate students from Berkeley, Stanford and other universities volunteer to teach courses there." The article implies that budget cuts have reduced the number of courses, but that is misleading. "Volunteer" is the key word here; by law no government money may be spent educating the incarcerated (think about that for a minute).
The program is administered by the Patten University Prison Project and all resources are donated, all instructors are volunteer. My wife was an instructor at San Quentin for a while; the program is tolerated by the administration because taking a college course is a carrot that can be withheld to enforce discipline. But it is difficult to run a college course when classes are canceled on no notice for lockdowns, resources are scarce, and the students may or may not have the freedom to actually do the homework between visits. One thing about those students though: they are certainly motivated.
The Dish 