I admit, I'm not well-versed on the build system, but my impression was that specifying --prefix in ./configure was indeed supposed to propagate to a subsequent make and make install. However, you may wish to attempt the following to be sure:
$ make PREFIX=/usr/users/students/ak4390/.local
$ make install PREFIX=/usr/users/students/ak4390/.local
-Kevin Ballard--
To unsubscribe from this list: send the line "unsubscribe git" in
the body of a message to majordomo@vger.kernel.org
More majordomo info at http://vger.kernel.org/majordomo-info.html