Mike Potts was halfway through a five-year prison sentence outside Houston when he heard about a program that would help him start a business when even buddies with clean records were struggling to find work. The Prison Entrepreneurship Program, run by a nonprofit group of the same name, works with Baylor University's Hankamer School of Business to train convicted felons to write business plans, market their ideas to investors, and develop workplace skills. Successful participants earn certificates from Baylor and, organizers hope, fare better than average in returning to society. For six months in the Cleveland Correctional Center, Mr. Potts, 38, pored over Harvard Business School case studies with professors and M.B.A. students and engaged in classroom discussions with fellow inmates. He developed a plan for a home-renovation business that he presented over and over again, fine-tuning it with critiques from students and local business leaders. Now Mr. Potts is one of about 850 graduates of the nine-year-old program, which has spawned a similar effort that started last spring at the University of Virginia's Darden School of Business. The goal of both programs is to help ex-convicts avoid prison's all-too-often revolving door. Graduate students are central to both programs: Up to 50 students at Baylor participate each semester, visiting prisons and conducting market research for the participants, whose own Internet access is restricted. Students from more than a dozen other business schools, including those at Brown and Harvard Universities, the University of Houston, and Texas A&M University, also act as advisers to inmates, with a program employee serving as an electronic go-between. Certificates from Baylor University and the University of Virginia help ex-cons find jobs faster and even start their own businesses.