Cook County Jail inmates learn financial literacy from Harvard grads in popular class

By MARYBEL GONZALEZ

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    CHICAGO (WBBM) — Cook County Jail detainees are getting an Ivy League education of sorts.

As CBS 2’s Marybel González reported Thursday, that education is coming through a program led by Harvard University grads looking to give back to their communities.

We visited when class was in session – the last one before graduation. The whiteboards detailed the students’ final presentation – and we heard typical words from the instructors congratulating the class on a job well done.

“You’ve honored us all semester,” said Dr. Bruce Hochstadt. “This is our tenth and final week.”

But what is perhaps not typical is that the students are not in a school or a university. They are all inmates at the Cook County Jail.

The Harvard grads were teaching them a course all about financial literacy.

“Like freezing your accounts and stuff like that while you’re incarcerated,” said jail detainee Carl Simmons.

He said he also learned “How to make the money make money.”

Simmons – like others in the class – learned all about credit, investing, and stretching their dollars. It was invaluable information they have already been sharing with their loved ones on the outside.

“I actually started talking about retirement to my little brother – trying to help him understand a little bit more,” an inmate said.

The program was run by volunteers from the Harvard Club of Chicago – brought in by Cook County Sheriff Tom Dart.

“Programming gives people opportunities they’ve never had before; gives them a sense of themselves; gives them a vision of different way they can live their lives,” Dart said.

Out of the dozens of programs available at the Cook County Jail, we are told by the instructors and students that the financial literacy class taught by Harvard alums is one of the most popular ones.

“They’re here because of a combination of bad circumstances, decisions, judgment, and breaks – but we’re incredibly impressed and humbled by the fact that they are making a voluntary decision to invest in their education and their futures,” said Hochstadt, the program’s founder.

The education is a short-term investment that everyone hopes will have big returns.

“Once you get out of here, if we know exactly what to do, that’ll make the community better,” said Simmons, “because we could teach people what we learned up in here too.”

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