Options for someone who's going to be on a ship for 9 months!

[EI2HCB]

Seems we went way off shore on this post! The sailor has a lot of reading options but very little testing options unless his vessel has a testing officer on board. Some people here test by learning the bare minimum to pass and move on to the next thing others spend a lot of time learning so they can apply their knowledge in the future. If someone is going to be on a ship for six months or more, the person should set their goals as to what degree they want and focus on. Then determine what General Education credits they'll need if they apply to a college not part of the big three and begin while they are on board to focus on a topic and work towards those goals. 4 REA books on board wouldn't take up much room and if focused on for a few hours each week the information would be in long term memory by the end of the tour and a series of tests could be taken with little review needed a laptop or cellphone with Itunes U and a series of lectures and a set of headphones could supplement anything an REA book didn't. A few weeks on shore and they'd have 12 credits on their transcript and the GI bill would be still available to them once they got out.
As for prisoner education, prison is boring and anyone with any initiative to do something for themselves needs to be encouraged to make a go of it. It is hard to be a productive member of society once you have a record because a lot of people don't want to take risks with people with a past so the cycle is hard to break free from. A lot of convicted criminals are intelligent people who with a better hope might be contributing to society instead of contributing to its demise.