Make New York Post a Preferred Source Embattled Cornell University is set to become the first Ivy League to offer bachelor’s degrees to jailbirds.
The Cornell Prison Education Program is launching a three-year Bachelor of Professional Studies program at Cayuga Correctional Facility in August 2027.
The medium-security prison for men in Moravia, NY, has housed notorious inmates, including transgender Big Apple serial killer Harvey Marcelin, an 88-year-old who spent 50 years behind bars until his release on parole in 2019.
He was sent away again last June for dismembering his latest victim, and is now in a maximum security prison east of Buffalo.
Cayuga prison is 20 miles from the Ithaca-based university, which is at the center of drug-fueled gang rape allegations at the Chi Phi fraternity house.
The first approved major will be in “Organizations, Markets and Society,” a degree that combines business, policy and social science studies.
A first cohort of 12 to 18 inmates will enroll in classes that will include economics, statistics, data analytics, entrepreneurship, marketing and finance, through a combination of self-paced learning and in-person sessions with Cornell professors at the prison for “discussion and networking.”
Prisoners with an associate’s degree, or the equivalent of two years of undergraduate education, will be eligible to apply, including inmates already housed at Cayuga and those seeking to transfer there.
Asked whether those convicted of violent crimes will be barred from enrolling, Cornell University said, “the antecedent background and ongoing conduct of participants in our program require that strict standards be met.”
“We do this work in the pursuit of breaking the cycles of crime and incarceration- making a safer and more just society for all,” a spokesperson for the Cornell Prison Education Program told The Post.
The Ivy’s prison program has already taught more than 1,000 inmates at Cayuga, Auburn and Five Points correctional facilities — 200 of which have completed an associate’s degree — since it was founded in 2001, giving them waived tuition and fees.
The school was awarded $750,000 over five years by the Manhattan DA’s office through its Criminal Justice Investment Initiative.
Last year’s classes included poetry, astronomy, creative writing, social psychology, world civilization, microeconomics, infectious diseases, introductory math and even meditation.
“We work to create something that feels much closer to a true college experience” said the Cornell Prison Education Program website, boasting about its extracurricular activities, includinga debate club at Cayuga that creates a “thoughtful and nonjudgmental atmosphere” focused on “liberating the mind.”
Meanwhile, New York AG Letitia James has been appointed special prosecutor to look into whether criminal charges should be filed against the seven Cornell fraternity brothers accused of drugging and sexually assaulting a female student.
Two of the defendants filed motions asking she be removed, saying she showed prejudice when she posted on social media that Jane Doe was a “survivor.”
