The Illinois Department of Corrections higher education program will receive $4 million from the Federal Department of Employment Security to stay alive amid state budget cuts.

Lake Land Community College is involved locally with the higher education program, which have taught vocational skills since 1969.

The program, which helps prison inmates acquire jobs once they return to society, was being pressured due to the downfall of the state’s economy. Budget cuts in higher education have recently hit universities throughout the state, and this program was expected to be eliminated altogether next month at Gov. Ryan’s 2003 budget address.

However, the reshuffling of funds will lead to 80 percent of the program’s budget being restored.

“State officials did some serious checking to find grant money that the state could no longer afford,” State Rep. Dale Righter, R-Mattoon, said Tuesday.

On Friday, Gov. Ryan, along with the Illinois Department of Corrections and the Illinois Community College Board, announced that the Workforce Investment Act grant program has secured $4 million of the higher education program’s $5 million budget.

Despite the 20 percent dip in the program’s budget, Robert Luther, president of Lake Land Community College, said that vocational classes taught in prisons, such as construction, cosmetology, horticulture, computer science, computer repair and a dog training program which trains dogs to assist physically disadvantaged people, would not be affected.

However, lack of funding will force the prebaccalaureate degree program, which had offered science, English and math classes, to be eliminated, Luther said.

Seventy-three jobs have been saved since the program along with the program, Luther said.

“We are very grateful to the governor for answering our urgent cry for help,” Luther said.

Along with the economic benefits of the program, higher education in prison may also help reform inmates.

Luther noted that a study done by the University of Illinois in 1997 showed that inmates who have completed the program are three times less likely to return to prison.

Lake Land Community College serves seven prisons in the state, and has graduated 1,580 inmates since 1997, Kelly Allee, director of public relations at Lake Land Community College, said. Allee also said that the school was one of 10 other community colleges that accommodates a state-wide average of over 3,500 correctional graduates per year.