Across Tennessee, community colleges are experiencing booming enrollments as the first wave of students accepted under the state’s free-tuition program, known as Tennessee Promise, cram into classrooms.
But while students are parking on the grass at Motlow State Community College’s Smyrna Center, where parking lots are full, some of the state’s four-year campuses have a lot of empty seats.
Freshman enrollment is down about 12 percent at the University of Tennessee at Martin and about 9 percent at its Chattanooga campus, according to preliminary estimates.
Several private colleges are also attributing enrollment declines at least in part to the free-tuition program, which has helped raise freshman enrollment across the state’s 13 community colleges by 14 percent this fall.
The Tennessee Promise program, which President Obama has touted as part of his push for free community college nationwide, covers tuition and fees for two years of community or technical college for every graduating high-school senior in the state. To qualify, students must attend full time, taking at least 12 credit hours per semester. They must also complete eight hours of community service and have a mentor.
As other states explore the idea of offering similar programs, they’re watching Tennessee’s enrollment patterns closely this fall for clues.
One big question is whether the community colleges are siphoning off students who would otherwise attend regional or lesser-known four-year colleges.
The jury is still out on that.
While a few campuses may have taken a hit partly due to the free-tuition program, other four-year colleges that compete with community colleges are seeing only modest declines this fall. Filling their seats wasn’t easy, though.
Giving More Aid
“Our primary concern has been with those institutions where students’ socioeconomic profiles look a lot like those of the community colleges,” said Claude O. Pressnell Jr., president of the Tennessee Independent Colleges and Universities Association.
“These campuses are having to spend a lot more institutional aid in order to get students to enroll,” he said, further straining the budgets of colleges that are already operating on razor-thin margins.
Freed-Hardeman University, a small Christian institution in rural Henderson, Tenn., reports freshman enrollment down 14 percent, according to early estimates.
One strategy four-year colleges are using to maintain enrollments is offering or expanding associate-degree programs, which make them eligible to participate in Tennessee Promise.
About half of Tennessee’s 31 private colleges that enroll undergraduates offer such programs.
Campuses that had mothballed two-year degrees in recent years are pumping new life into them to compete for students, Mr. Pressnell said.
Not all four-year colleges are facing serious enrollment declines. The University of Tennessee’s flagship campus, in Knoxville, as well as the state’s prestigious private colleges like Vanderbilt University, have not been affected by the free-tuition program, higher-education officials said.
Meanwhile, freshman enrollment at regional public universities outside the University of Tennessee system is down only 1.7 percent, according to preliminary estimates. Some said the slight dip indicates that most of the increase in community-college enrollment represents new students who otherwise wouldn’t have gone to college.
“We think it’s clear that the increase in full-time enrollment does not represent a shuffling among sectors,” said Mike Krause, executive director of Tennessee Promise, “but rather a likely entry of students into higher education who may not have otherwise enrolled.”
Generous Scholarships
The four-year public colleges that have suffered only minor enrollment declines this fall have had to dig deep into their coffers to entice students with generous scholarships that may be hard to maintain without additional state money, their leaders said. They’re also aggressively reaching out to high-school students and recruiting heavily out of state.
At Middle Tennessee State University, a slight drop in the freshman class has been offset by an increase in transfer students, said Debra Sells, vice president for student affairs.
Other four-year colleges are also beefing up their transfer programs, hoping to attract the students just starting in two-year programs.
“We’re looking forward to a couple of years from now, when these students start pouring into our campuses,” said Joseph A. DiPietro, president of the University of Tennessee system.
Enrollment increases are creating both opportunities and challenges for campuses like Motlow State’s center in Smyrna, outside of Nashville, where enrollment ballooned by more than 20 percent this fall. The center ran out of classroom space, so some remedial classes that were supposed to meet three times a week can meet for only one extended session. The center is considering scheduling more classes on weekends, according to the college’s president, Anthony G. Kinkel, who started last month.
Tennessee Promise students account for about 60 percent of the growth on the Smyrna campus, which had to scramble to hire more adjunct faculty members, as well as completion coaches to advise the new students.
“We’re going to have to have more hybrid classes, where some of the content is online, and look into offering weekend cohorts,” Mr. Kinkel said.
One of the biggest challenges may involve meeting the needs of the growing number of students who are academically unprepared.
At the Smyrna center, ACT scores have dipped this fall, Mr. Kinkel said. “We’re getting a group of students because it’s free, who might not have otherwise gone to college,” he said.
And because Tennessee has moved to a corequisite model of remediation, all of those students will enroll directly in college-level classes, with remedial classes taught alongside them.
“They’re enrolled at a college-level math or English class that they never would have been enrolled in before,” the president said, “and that’s going to pose some interesting challenges.”
Pilot programs in Tennessee suggest that students enrolled in corequisite classes are more likely to complete college-level courses, he said. Many educators question, though, whether the classes serve students with the greatest academic needs, many of whom would not have considered college if it weren’t for Tennessee Promise.
Katherine Mangan writes about community colleges, completion efforts, and job training, as well as other topics in daily news. Follow her on Twitter @KatherineMangan, or email her at katherine.mangan@chronicle.com.
