Program to educate incarcerated people costs 40K per graduate?!

[LevelUP]

Staffing is the big cost area. If prisoners are going to have access to Internet searching and to prompt turnaround email correspondence, discussion boards, and instant messaging (e.g., for live chat with an online college librarian), in all but the most country-club minimum security environment, someone on or responsible to prison staff is needed to closely attend to their computer use and monitor their communication.

They can use DNS blocking to prevent users from visiting certain sites.

It would be cheap to hire someone in a 3rd world country to monitor their PCs remotely and use software that takes screenshots to monitor internet activity.

Computers are cheap, the Internet is cheap.  Financial aid the federal government pays for so who cares about that from a state level.

ACE credits someone needs to pay for and maybe up to a $5000 budget for a college degree beyond what financial aid pays.

GoFundMe or other private donations can help get these programs started if the state doesn't want to pay for the program.