Academic Reentry as a Pathway to Belonging and Purpose 

By Andre Anderson ’23 

Academic reentry is a novel idea, an alternative to the traditional workforce pathway that returning citizens are often relegated to. The opportunity to join the academy after incarceration offers a newfound freedom to justice-impacted individuals like me. Public land-grant universities have an obligation to serve all publics, regardless of their background. This next step in my journey is an opportunity that was never afforded to me prior to prison. 

Reentry itself is a profound challenge for anyone making the leap back into society. Higher education is not a privilege, rather, it is a basic human right that must be offered and supported for all. Justice-impacted individuals face many unique needs, from housing to transportation. These are second-order needs that often obscure the deeper necessity: belonging and purpose. A minimum wage job cannot meet these fundamental human requirements. A collegiate pathway can. 

A university is a community, and it functions as one. It provides agency, relation, and space: all requisites for a healthy life, if one chooses to engage. Within this community, belonging begins to form through each bond, connection, and interaction.  For a returning citizen, this environment offers a safe place to let their guard down, to feel what true community can be, and in time, to develop purpose. This is where the pathway of reentry opens up, and a blue ocean of possibilities comes into view. 

Academic reentry is not a service provision or a transactional handoff of goods. It is an invitation into the academy, extended from intuition and principle, without prerequisite, from day one. It represents one of the most promising possibilities for successful reentry, shifting the focus from avoiding re-incarceration to fostering true integration and success. If our best measure of success is whether someone returns to prison within three years, we will never understand the problem, let alone imagine the solution. Yet in college, we are taught to do exactly that: to imagine solutions to complex problems. 

Reclaiming my agency through education offers a vital alternative to the status quo, the mandate to take a minimum-wage job and “make it work.” My future will not be foreclosed upon by this tone-deaf narrative. With each book I read, my ears are unstopped, and I begin to imagine the endless possibilities of my future as a justice-impacted student. 

Andre Anderson is a 2023 graduate of Metro State through the TREC program. He is currently pursuing a Master of Advocacy and Political Leadership degree at Metro State.