Once rising college enrollment numbers in Tennessee stall
Despite initially increasing the number of high school graduates going to college, Tennessee’s landmark free program is not sustaining long-term growth in enrollment and graduation rates.
Now, the state may consider new initiatives to jump-start efforts to educate more Tennesseans, according to a new state Comptroller’s Office report.
In fact, four years after the launch of Tennessee Promise, which allows students to attend community college tuition-free, the college-going rate of Tennesseans has declined from 64.4% to 61.8%, according to the report. And fewer of the program’s participants remain on track and graduate compared with those in 2015.
That year, nearly 65% of high school graduates in 2015 enrolled in college courses either the summer or fall after graduation — a 6% increase from the year before. Between 2015 and 2019, the rate decreased to today’s college-going rate of 61.8%, according to the report.
In 2018, then-chief policy officer for the Tennessee Higher Education Commission Emily House said the drop wasn’t a cause for concern, but a “new normal” after the program helped boost enrollment among recent graduates.
Though the number of students attending college has increased since 2014, the state predicts the number of Tennesseans actually earning degrees or credentials likely will slow after 2022.
The Tennessee Promise program inspired national trends and is part of the state’s Drive to 55 initiative launched by former Gov. Bill Haslam to increase the percentage of Tennesseans with a postsecondary credential to 55% by 2025.
Meeting that goal is unlikely without increasing the number of students who enter and remain in the program, the comptroller’s report said.
In 2015, the state’s community colleges saw a 38% increase in students who returned for a second year — one of the pivotal times when students might drop out because of financial or personal demands, the report found.
But that number also has declined. With an estimated 10.3% drop in enrollment in community colleges in the fall of 2020 due to the coronavirus pandemic, officials worry that fewer Tennesseans will earn postsecondary degrees in the coming years.
Retention rate data also shows that fewer students remained on track to graduate since 2018 — an issue exacerbated by the pandemic.