The Alliance for Higher Education in Prison has an important update about one of our programs, the Prison Education Book Connection. Unfortunately, there will be no application cycle for Spring 2027, and no future cycles are currently planned for this textbook donation program in partnership with W. W. Norton & Company.

We know many of you have come to rely on these donations and are already making decisions about textbooks for the Spring 2027 semester. We are sorry for the uncertainty this may create and recognize the difficulty of finding other ways to meet your students’ textbook needs.

Over the past several years, the Alliance has invested its own staff time and resources in administering the program, coordinating requests, and covering shipping, without any dedicated grant funding for those costs. We made that investment because access to textbooks is essential to a college education, and we know the barriers many incarcerated students face in obtaining them.

In 2025 alone, the program provided approximately 3,650 books, representing over $367,000 in savings for participating programs. We are grateful to W. W. Norton & Company for its generous textbook donations and to the educators and program staff who helped these books reach students.

To continue reliably, the program needs dedicated funding for staff to administer it and for shipping. We do not currently have that support in place. Funding designated for our other grant-supported projects does not cover this program’s ongoing needs.

We remain open to conversations with funders and partners about a sustainable future for the program. Any restart would depend on securing both funding and staff capacity, and we cannot offer a timeline for resuming applications. If you are interested in supporting that possibility, or have questions about this change, please contact alliance@higheredinprison.org.

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