But what is new about Harvard's venture, more than five years in the making, is that it is the first time that public broadcasters can remember a regular college course's being presented on television.
This training lasted 6 h (2 h of lecture and 4 h of practical training), in accordance with 2010 AHA guidelines for CPR to be taught as part of a regular college course.
Indeed more than half are assigned to one or more not-for-college-credit "developmental," or remedial, courses, which are aimed at teaching the basic academic skills that are needed to thrive in regular college credit courses.
The main barrier remains cost – most prisoners cannot afford to pay even discounted tuition and few states appropriate sufficient funds to underwrite a regular schedule of in-prison college courses.
They may drive alone to jobs, work-study programs, driver ed classes and night school or college courses, but not to regular high school classes.
They are full-time, full-cost courses of study, usually taught by regular faculty in the regular college rather than in continuing education departments.
McIntyre was intrigued by the course's unorthodox dynamic: Half of his classmates would be regular college kids, but the other half would be his fellow inmates.
