The Brief

A year ago, California State University, Dominguez Hills started the state's first master’s degree program for incarcerated students, with the goal of creating a pathway for a growing number of college graduates to continue their education behind bars. Already, its future is uncertain.

The state agency that paid tuition for 31 students in the inaugural class of the humanities graduate program says it may have made a mistake.

Not all of the students funded by the Department of Rehabilitation, which provides vocational services for people with disabilities seeking employment, should have been deemed eligible for its services, officials said. And that means that both students already enrolled and new ones seeking to start the grad program may have no way to pay for classes.

Now, students are anxious and college officials are scrambling to find alternative ways to cover tuition costs.

More than a month after classes officially started, around a third of the 41 students who had been accepted into the program’s second cohort had not yet received funding. The rest of the students are in limbo: some have explicitly been denied funding, others are waiting to see if the funding will be approved, and a few haven’t even had interviews about their eligibility for support yet. And some students in the first cohort are wondering if they’ll be able to finish their degrees.

Access to graduate programs inside is becoming increasingly important as the number of bachelor’s programs in prison grows with the return last year of Pell Grant eligibility for incarcerated students. Since the first incarcerated bachelor’s graduates got their degrees from California State University Los Angeles at the state prison in Lancaster in 2021, California prisons now offer 11 bachelor’s programs, with two more starting next year.

Several of those Cal State LA grads continued on to the master’s program, which is open to students across California’s 34 prisons. It’s part of the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation commitment to offering education “from grade school to grad school.” Research shows that the higher the level of education someone achieves in prison, the less likely they are to return to prison once they are released and the more likely they are to find a job.

Graduate programs in prison are rare. The few master’s programs that are available are usually print-based programs where students submit their assignments and communicate with professors via mail. The Cal State Dominguez Hills program is different. Most of its students have laptops that allow them to communicate with their professors and also interact with their classmates on moderated discussion boards.

But the current challenges facing the master’s program highlight the vulnerability of prison education programs that rely on a single funding source. Programs must often cobble together funding from various sources, sometimes resulting in tenuous partnerships between agencies with different primary missions. The situation underscores the need for diversified and sustainable funding models for prison education programs.

The federal rules are clear

The Department of Rehabilitations funds people, not programs, said Kim Rutledge, deputy director of legislation and communications. The agency is primarily focused on preparing individuals with disabilities to find jobs. "Sometimes we pay for education as a part of getting someone to competitive, integrated employment, but we're not strictly an education program,” she said.

Although the agency serves people with disabilities in California, its funding primarily comes from federal workforce dollars. That money has clear eligibility rules, said Mark Erlichman, deputy director of vocational rehabilitation.

The guidelines mean the agency cannot fund individuals who don’t have job opportunities in the near future without putting the entire agency and the population it serves at risk. As a result, the agency can’t in most cases provide money or services to incarcerated students who are not expecting to be released soon.

“We have a program that served 154,000 Californians with disabilities last year,” Erlichman said. “There's no flexibility that wouldn't jeopardize our entire program.”

Counselors evaluate individuals on a case-by-case basis to see if they can receive services from the Department of Rehabilitation. Eligibiity to receive financial support includes having a disability that significantly hinders someone’s ability to work and being able to benefit from services to achieve employment in a competitive, integrated setting.

(

Courtesy California State University, Dominguez Hills

)

In practice that means a job in the community that pays at least minimum wage. Individuals who are serving life without the possibility of parole or other long sentences are generally precluded from finding such employment.

“Therefore they would not be eligible for our services, which in this case is asking for education to be paid for," Rutledge said.

Most prison jobs would not meet the competitive employment criteria either. Incarcerated individuals in California usually earn less than $.74 an hour.

Much of the Department of Rehabilitation’s work with the incarcerated population is with reentry planning before people are released. Formerly incarcerated students with disabilities have been also able to use its support to pay for college. But it’s unusual for the agency to be working with individuals who might still have a long time to serve.

Last year, counselors may have determined that some incarcerated individuals in the first cohort were eligible for services based on limited information, Rutledge said.

“There are some instances last year where the counselor who made the determination wasn't aware that there was no possibility of parole,” Erlichman added.

Erlichman stressed that there hasn’t been a change in criteria and there is no Department of Rehabilitation policy against funding people who have life sentences. He said they will work with individuals in the first cohort who had been determined eligible for support in error.

“We're not going to pull [funding] right away, but we really have to look at those again on a case-by-case basis,” Erlichman said.

The case for postgraduate opportunities in prison

Just because someone doesn’t have a release date or has a life without parole sentence doesn’t mean that they won’t ever get out of prison. “Parole dates are moving targets,” said Matt Luckett, director of the Cal State Dominguez Hills master’s program.

People are often released early through clemency or state legislative reforms that allow them to be resentenced, and precluding them from services that support education means that they are less likely to be able to support themselves if they are released. Twenty-one students who were in the first three cohorts of the Cal State LA bachelor’s program at Lancaster — many of whom thought they’d never be going home — have gotten out.

“We want to give them every chance to be as prepared as they can be to get a job if they do get out,” Luckett said.

Even if they never get out of prison, lifers often become mentors and tutors to younger individuals inside. Sometimes they even start education programs.

Master’s student Dortell Williams, who is a Cal State LA grad serving life without parole, said that people serving extreme sentences are often excluded from rehabilitative programs despite the ways they can benefit their communities.

“We are expected to die in prison. And while that outcome is a real possibility, the irony is that our permanence in prison is used by the guards as a stabilizing influence on rowdy youth and people sojourning through the system,” he said. “We mentor, peer instruct, quell violence and lead people in the right direction. Education helps us shape a safer environment inside for our peers and staff, and helps us keep the youth in our families and communities from coming to prison at all.”

Kunlyna Tauch, another Cal State LA graduate at Lancaster who was accepted to the master’s program, said that seeing peers earn a degree – particularly a master’s – can change a prison’s entire culture.

“Consider the wider implication of what graduate-level education can mean to a community of people that don't think they are worth it,” said Tauch, who will be released in October. “When one person achieves something, the entire population experiences that accomplishment.”

The need for broader investment

As graduate students, individuals enrolled in the Cal State Dominguez Hills program are not allowed to take out federal student loans and are not eligible for federal financial aid such as the newly reinstated Pell Grants. Most students are unable to cover costs themselves.

All costs for the Cal State Dominguez Hills master’s program — estimated to be between $12,000-15,000 for the two years — have to be covered by tuition and fees. The program doesn’t receive any direct funding from the university or the corrections department.

Luckett said it was never the intention for the master’s program to rely solely on funding from the Department of Rehabilitation. In the short term, individual students are applying to scholarships and Luckett is looking at alternative sources of funding such as a GoFundMe campaign. But, he says, with hundreds more graduates expected from prison bachelor’s programs over the next several years, there needs to be broader investment in postgraduate opportunities in California from both public agencies and philanthropic organizations. “The whole point of building this ecosystem is making sure it’s sustainable,” Luckett said.

A representative for the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation said that over the past few years the department has worked with Cal State Dominguez Hills to explore options for tuition and will continue to support graduate opportunities. “Just as for students in the community, it is a challenge to find financial support for the master's degree,” the spokesperson said. “Although DOR's policy clarification is a hurdle, it is not the end of the program or of CDCR's commitment to the program.”

Charlotte West is a reporter covering the future of postsecondary education in prisons for Open Campus, a nonprofit newsroom focused on higher education. Sign up for her newsletter, College Inside.

Nearly 20 years after founding a successful environmental and safety consulting services company, Robin Thorne said she still gets checked for being a Black woman in the construction industry.

“I've had situations where people, they don't even make eye contact, and then the male has to step back to say, 'She's running the show,'" she said.

Robin Thorne (in pink jacket) founded DemoChicks to help women of color land jobs in construction industries.

(

Courtesy DemoChicks

)

Thorne runs CTI Environmental, a multi-million dollar company that was contracted by the Army Corps of Engineers to do debris removal after the L.A. fires.

She’s been an engineer for decades and knows fewer than one of four workers in architecture, construction and engineering industries who are women — and much fewer are women of color.

That proportion is low considering 47% of the U.S. labor force are women.

That's why she’s organized a “Women in STEM Signing Day” at Long Beach City College on Saturday, May 30. The event’s meant to create the type of excitement normally associated with young people signing up for college sports teams.

She wants younger women to tap into their drive to succeed

There were far fewer women in these jobs when Thorne was growing up in Philadelphia, but she didn’t let roadblocks, including those in her personal life — like being a single mom on public assistance — stop her.

DemoChicks helps give young women of color exposure to construction-related jobs.

(

Courtesy DemoChicks

)

“When I thought about being an engineer, I didn't think about it being male-dominated. I just knew I wanted to be an engineer,” she said.

She added that some women do give up on similar dreams or fail to find the spark that allows them to see themselves doing these jobs. That’s why Thorne started DemoChicks seven years ago. She wants young women to see her and think “engineer,” as well as connect with women who are already working in these industries.

Mentorship, examples, and money

The organization is called DemoChicks because demolition is one of the jobs that keeps Thorne’s company busy. More women are entering architecture, construction and engineering jobs than before, but the percentage of women in each industry is still low:

15% in engineering
26% in architecture
11% in construction

These are mostly stable jobs with good entry-level wages, jobs such as safety coordinators, project managers, project engineers and construction managers.

Beyond giving teen girls IRL examples of women in construction industry jobs, DemoChicks supports their academic efforts, which often means helping them out meet college expenses. DemoChicks gave out $1,000 scholarships to eight women last year (35 applied).

A third generation Latina truck driver from South LA

One of those scholarship recipients in 2024 was Ana Terrazas. She recalled growing up in South L.A., not as a latch key kid, but as a truck cab kid.

Ana Terrazas as a teen at her mother's construction job. Terrazas now works for a large construction company as a project engineer.

(

Courtesy Ana Terrazas

)

 ”My mother… was a truck driver,” Terrazas said, driving belly dump trailers on construction sites. Terrazas would help her mother change tires and lend a hand with any mechanical repairs. Her grandfather was a truck driver too.

“Since then I've always been obsessed with job sites, and also the superintendent, the one that would tell everybody where to go, how to do their job, and organize everything,” Terrazas said.

Two years ago she was working hard to finish her two majors — civil engineering and construction management — to earn her bachelor’s degree from Cal Poly Pomona. She applied for and was awarded a $1,500 scholarship from DemoChicks. That help, she said, had a big effect.

DemoChicks founder Robin Thorne, right, presents Ana Terrazas with a scholarship.

(

Courtesy Ana Terrazas

)

“I didn't have to take as many hours of work to be able to focus more on my studies and also in my internship during that time,” Terrazas said.

The internship, at Swinerton, a nationwide construction company that's more than 100 years old, turned into full time work as a project engineer.

Terrazas paid it forward earlier this year, inviting Thorne and a dozen DemoChicks to a Swinerton work site during Women in Construction Week. She urged the women to tap into their drive to succeed and lean on people like her for help.

“As long as they're driven and this is what they want, there shouldn't be a reason for them to not be able to get a job here,” Terrazas said.

With LACMA’s new David Geffen Galleries just steps away, it may be easy to forget that we have the richest Ice Age fossil site on Earth right here with the La Brea Tar Pits.

But the museum and research facilities at the tar pits are also scheduled for a multimillion dollar renovation.

Built in 1977, the George C. Page Museum at the tar pits has a special place in the hearts of Angelenos who’ve ever taken a field trip to see its massive mastodon skeletons or dire wolf skulls. Or have maybe shed a tear at the sculptures of the mammoth family in distress in the Lake Pit out front.

All that stuff is staying, museum educator Kay Lai told LAist, but new interactive exhibits will allow visitors to better understand the science that’s happening in their own backyard.

A rendering of the new outdoor amphitheater at the La Brea Tar Pits.

(

Courtesy the Natural History Museums of Los Angeles County

)

The transformation

“This museum, as beloved as it is, definitely needs that refresh,” Lai said. “And I’m really excited for the next generation of kids that gets to grow up and make new memories here with this new space.”

Lai said the museum refresh will include a new focus on Zed — the 80% complete Columbian mammoth found here — and other notable animals they’ve unearthed over the decades. The mammoth’s bones will be reassembled and Zed will “stand tall for the first time since the Ice Age,” according to the museum’s website.

“We’re able to focus on the very first saber-toothed cat fossils that we’ve ever discovered ... As well as some of our Ice Age survivors ... like Pebbles the Puma ... Pebbles would have been the ancestor of some of the mountain lions that still live in Los Angeles today, including P-22 that passed away a couple years ago,” Lai said.

Then there’s the fish bowl: you know, the fossil lab with windows where you can watch researchers at work?

An even better fish bowl

“So we’ll still have the fish bowl, but it’s going to be much more interactive and there’ll be much more discussion of what’s going on inside the fossil lab,” said Regan Dunn, assistant deputy director and curator at the new Samuel Oschin Global Center for Ice Age Research.

A digital rendering of the new fish bowl at the Samuel Oschin Global Center for Ice Age Research.

(

Courtesy the Natural History Museums of Los Angeles County

)

Dunn explained that the area where they store their collections of fossils and other specimens is getting major updates too.

“Super valuable, millions of specimens, will be in upgraded systems where there’s climate control. There’ll be enclosed cabinets and be under much better maintenance. And also allow for much more research to happen,” she said.

The La Brea Tar Pits are still very much an active paleontological research site. Dunn said any time a hole goes in the ground in the Hancock Park area, a new discovery is made.

With new outdoor classrooms and a 1-kilometer pedestrian pathway that will take visitors past excavation sites, the idea is to make the research going on here more visible to the public.

Your last chance to visit the tar pits before its two-year transformation is July 6.

A digital rendering showing the aerial view of the updated La Brea Tar Pits grounds.

(

Courtesy the Natural History Museums of Los Angeles County

)

This story was originally published by CalMatters. Sign up for their newsletters.

In the face of the nation's highest gas prices, California lawmakers approved a bill to ease restrictions on E85 conversion kits — devices that let conventional gasoline cars run on a cheaper, mostly ethanol fuel blend.

Assembly Bill 2046, dubbed the “Access to Affordable Gas Act” by its author, Assemblymember Rhodesia Ransom, a Stockton Democrat, advanced through the Assembly on a 59-0 vote with no debate or opposition.

The measure is the latest example of Sacramento lawmakers scrambling to respond to gas costs that have soared amid the Iran-Israel war, which has rattled global oil markets and pushed California pump prices above $6 a gallon. It now heads to the California state Senate and would need Gov. Gavin Newsom’s approval before it becomes law.

“Californians consistently pay more at the pump than drivers from other states, and gas prices are once again climbing across the state,” Ransom said on the Assembly floor Thursday. “For commuters and working families, [the proposal] offers a practical way to save money.”

If approved in its current form, the measure would exempt manufacturers of E85 converter kits from an approval process by the state’s primary climate regulator, the California Air Resources Board, which requires companies to demonstrate the devices do not increase a vehicle's emissions. The bill would leave in place a separate federal certification process run by the Environmental Protection Agency.

“Members in Sacramento are looking for ways to try to reduce costs — or appear to reduce costs of driving — and so this is a way to do that,” said Aaron Smith, a UC Berkeley economist and fuels expert.

The converter kits, which cost between $800 to $1,250, according to a legislative analysis of the bill, would let drivers convert their cars to run on both gasoline and E85 fuel.

E85 is a blend of up to 85% ethanol and 15% gasoline; the share of ethanol typically is between 55% and 85%, said Smith, the Berkeley expert.

Jeff Wilkerson, government affairs manager for Pearson Fuels, the largest E85 fuel provider in the state and a bill supporter, said E85 — much of which is made from Midwest corn — is largely insulated from overseas oil shocks that drive California gas prices. The ethanol blend has sold for $2 or more less per gallon than gasoline during recent price spikes.

While E85 is typically priced lower than gasoline and can reduce petroleum dependence and carbon emissions, it delivers 20% to 30% fewer miles per gallon, according to the air board, meaning drivers only save money when E85 is priced at least 20% to 30% below gasoline.

About 1.3 million vehicles in California can currently use the fuel, which is sold at about 640 stations statewide — just 3% of the state’s more than 15,000 fuel pumps, according to the bill analysis.

Ransom said more E85 pumps would be built if the state loosened restrictions and encouraged demand for the fuel blend. She stressed that her bill would present E85 as an alternative.

“For some people, it may not be a wise choice, but at least now it’s going to be a choice,” she said.

Environmentally, the fuel is rated cleaner than regular gasoline by California's Low Carbon Fuel Standard. But that rating has critics. Smith, the Berkeley economist, said the benefits of ethanol are likely overstated. Official numbers likely understate emissions from land use as rising corn demand for ethanol pushes farmers to clear forested land.

The state’s own certification record offers a cautionary tale. Lindsay Buckley, a spokesperson for the board, said the agency has received only five applications from companies for E85 conversion kits since 2008 and that none has cleared the certification process, which is designed to ensure modified vehicles still meet their original emissions standards. Supporters of the proposal argue the board moves slowly and its regulations are burdensome.

But loosening that standard carries its own risk, cautioned Aaron Kurz, senior consultant on the Assembly Transportation Committee, especially now.

As the federal government has stripped scientific expertise from regulatory decisions, he wrote in his analysis, “this committee should consider if the state should cede authority over an inherently scientific process and set a precedent for transferring approval authority to the federal government.”

MOUNTAIN VIEW – Google is changing what it means to Google.

The company this week announced significant changes to its search box — that austere, single-line input field on its homepage that has been the world's most popular entry point into the web for around two-and-a-half decades.

The new version looks similar to the old one-line text box, but it's dynamic, expanding with longer queries. Users can also drop videos, pictures and files into it for what Google calls "multimodal" search.

Behind the scenes, a bigger shift is under way. Google is merging artificial intelligence and traditional web search in a move that Liz Reid, who oversees search at Google, said brings "the best of web and the best of AI together."

Critics say folding AI deeper into search risks further muddying the waters around the provenance of information gleaned from the web and could take agency away from users. A chatbot is likely to return a summary with only a few links to further information, unlike a web search that returns many pages of links.

But the shift is, in some ways, not surprising, given Silicon Valley's hard pivot toward AI, with Google and others investing billions in the technology and refocusing corporate strategies around it.

For about a year, Google has put "AI Overviews" — short summaries — at the top of some search results. "What we've seen with AI Overviews is that people don't want either just an AI or the web. They want a mix of both," said Reid.

She said she's noticed that users have started to ask longer questions, with more natural language, rather than fragments or key words. "They're asking the question that they really have," Reid said.

For Google, that potentially unlocks new understandings of user intentions. "If you start using more natural language, if you're having a conversation, when you've shifted from researching into buying, you've sort of indicated that. And so we can put better ads because we understand what that is," Reid said.

Google is also introducing agentic functionality to search, so that users can ask it to do tasks over time — like search for theater tickets at regular intervals or send shoppers a notification when something goes on sale or conduct a weekly scan of the internet for local events.

Carolina Milanesi, an independent technology analyst, said Google is trying to make its cash cow business — search — richer and more personalized, and it will make shopping easier. But there is a risk that users may have fewer choices about what to click.

"Right now it's: I ask a question, I get a bunch of answers and I feel that I'm in control as to which answer I take, or if I'm looking for something, which product I'm going to end up buying. That is going to be less so going forward," she said.

Milanesi envisions AI-enabled search and agents proposing products to consumers — perhaps even those they have requested — but with less clarity or choice around where it's coming from.

"If you're going to say: 'I want a pair of Jordans, go find them,' you're not necessarily sure what steps have been taken and whether the AI has used a source or a store that was paid for and, therefore, came up in the search results," she said, "or if AI actually went and did their due diligence and picked the best for me as a customer."

Sarah T. Roberts, director of the Center for Critical Internet Inquiry at UCLA, said the algorithmic underpinnings of Google's web search results have long been "by design, inscrutable to end users," and there's more to it than simply the best of the web floating to the top of any given search. Adding AI will only make the system more opaque, she said.

"What's happening now with AI is that that complexity that already existed will be further obfuscated and even more difficult to unpack," she said.

She noted episodes where Google's AI has provided bad results, including advising putting glue in pizza and eating rocks. "Those gaffes shouldn't be forgotten as Google makes this transition," she said.

And critics say that driving more Google users from web searches to interacting with AI will exacerbate the risks of the so-called "Google Zero" scenario, where the growth of AI queries kills off web search and suffocates the internet click economy as we know it. That includes online shops, web advertisers and news organizations that all depend on referred traffic from Google.

While the redesigned box will be the same for all Google users, there are various tricks and tips online for people who want to disable or avoid some AI functions when using Google.

Google is a financial supporter of NPR.