It's an old and controversial question: Should federal Pell grants be used to help prisoners pay for college?
Tomorrow, at a prison in Jessup, Md., Education Secretary Arne Duncan and Attorney General Loretta Lynch are expected to unveil a program to do just that. The new plan would create a limited pilot program allowing some students in prison to use Pell grants to pay for college classes.
The key word there is "limited" — because there's only so much the administration can do. To understand why, we have to go back to November 1993.
