Mount Tamalpais College at San Quentin State Prison is the first accredited junior college in the country based behind bars.
The college is one of dozens of educational, job training and self-help programs available to the 3,100 inmates in the medium-security portion of San Quentin, making it a desired destination for inmates statewide who lobby to be transferred there.
The college’s $5 million annual budget is fully funded by private donations, with a paid staff and volunteer faculty, many of them graduate students from top universities, including Stanford and the University of California, Berkeley. Guards check the IDs of students coming to classes held in trailers set up on one edge of the prison’s exercise yard, where students stop to discuss their assignments — corrections officers watching from four towers above.
"I got into the classroom for all the wrong reasons, but I realized that I was actually learning something and that there were people who believed in you more than you believe in yourself. When you see that, you start believing in yourself," he said. He said he cherishes helping his students "share experiences and share their humanity with one another."
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