‘NOT YET’ BETTER THAN ‘NO’ FOR UTC

That nearly $60 million for a proposed renovation and addition to the Rollins College of Business at the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga wasn’t included in Gov. Bill Lee’s fiscal 2024 budget was less of a “no” and more of a “not yet,” we believe.

The budget, after all, did not include any of the Tennessee Higher Education Commission’s new major capital project recommendations for four-year universities.

But Lee did put nearly $1 billion into funding for the state’s 24 Tennessee Colleges of Applied Technologies (TCATs), which offer more than 70 occupational programs to help job seekers train for a career and help businesses build a skilled workforce.

These occupational programs often turn into family wage jobs, and the programs at each TCAT are usually tailored to what skills and jobs are needed by industries in each locale.

In the TCAT program at Chattanooga State Community College, for instance, students can receive certificates and diplomas in such fields as building construction technology, commercial truck driving, collision repair, computer support and surgical technology.

And as opposed to four-year colleges, 81% of TCAT students complete their programs, 86% find a job in their field of study, 96% of employers rate TCAT graduates “satisfactory” or higher in job knowledge, technical skills, work quality, and work attitude, and 97% of alumni rate program preparation for employment “satisfactory” or higher.

Four-year college programs are not for everybody, a fact more people are coming to understand, and Lee’s TCAT budget ask is acknowledging that fact.

“The governor and General Assembly have generously funded higher education over the past four years,” Jade Byers, press secretary for Lee, wrote in an email to this newspaper’s Andy Sher, “and this year, we have the opportunity to prepare Tennessee’s workforce for the future with an historic … investment in our state’s colleges of applied technology.”

The lack of funding didn’t seem to worry Hamilton County’s state senators, Bo Watson, R-Hixson, and Todd Gardenhire, R-Chattanooga. Both pointed to UTC’s planned health sciences building for which the governor included some $60 million in his fiscal 2023 budget but which has yet to be started.

Both also fretted that the current inflationary economy likely would require more than the state allocated for the health sciences building and that it was important to get that building under way before beginning on another for the school.

Watson also touched on the current local economy in his remarks to the newspaper.

“I would just say we have not heard a lot of discussion here in the job market about not having enough MBAs (Master of Business Administration),” he said. “But we have heard a lot of discussion about not having enough nurses and other health care practitioners.”

Newspaper archives show the university was looking toward a health sciences building as far back as 2015 and received a go-ahead to start formal planning in 2017.

However, with the UTC business college’s namesake, Gary W. Rollins, having agreed to give another $30 million to the university, and University of Tennessee system President Randy Boyd calling it “No. 1 on our list,” we don’t think it will be many years before the Tennessee capital budget includes money toward what is now an $87.68 million project for the renovation and addition to the business college.

Frankly, we don’t think Lee, Boyd, Watson, Gardenhire and others want the money from Rollins, the vice chairman and CEO of the company that runs Orkin Pest Control, to be left on the table.

“Believe me,” Gardenhire told the newspaper, “when a guy comes along and says I’m going to give you another $30 million on top of the $40 million, you don’t want to disappoint him.”

UTC’s Fletcher Hall, which holds the business college, opened in 1940 and was originally the city’s public library and the university’s library. UTC took possession of the building in 1976 when the current Chattanooga Public Library opened on Broad Street, and it underwent renovations in 1995, 2016 and 2020, the latter changes thanks to the original $40 million gift from Rollins, who graduated from the University of Chattanooga in 1967.

The state had put in $1.7 million in 2016 for lighting, technology and classroom upgrades on the building’s second floor and $7.56 million in 1994 for updated classrooms, computer labs, a new entrance and elevator for handicapped access.

We believe Lee did the right thing by investing heavily in the state TCAT centers this year, but we don’t believe he will forget — and Boyd would remind him if he did — that more improvements at UTC’s college of business will pay dividends, too.