Thirty-seven percent of students who remained in the Promise Scholarship program earned a two-year associate’s degree within three years, but only 11 percent failed to maintain their eligibility. This was often due to incomplete financial aid documentation or incomplete work hours. Requires or fails to remain enrolled in college at least part time. Tennessee plans to produce a total of 50,000 college graduates by 2025 since the scholarship program began, administrators said in an interview.
Before the free tuition program expanded across the state, only 16 percent of Tennessee students who started attending community college in 2011 earned an associate’s degree three years later. Since then, the graduation rate for students who started attending community college in 2014 has increased to 22%. At this time, 27 counties in Tennessee had started their own tuition-free programs, but a statewide policy had not yet been implemented.
By 2020, after five years of free tuition statewide, 28% of Tennessee community college students earned a degree in three years. Although not all of these students participated in the free tuition program, many did.
It’s unclear whether tuition-free programs are the driving force behind higher graduation rates. Perhaps motivated students enrolled in the scholarship program and followed the rules of the scholarship program, or perhaps even without the scholarship program there would have been more graduates. It’s also possible that unrelated national reforms, from increased federal financial aid to academic advising, are helping more students reach the finish line.
I spoke to Celeste Carruthers, an economist at the University of Tennessee, Knoxville. She is researching the state’s free tuition program. She’s currently crunching the numbers to figure out whether the program is causing an increase in graduation rates, but the signs she’s seeing now give her “reason for optimism.” She used U.S. Census data to compare college enrollment rates in Tennessee to other regions of the United States. In the years immediately following the statewide scholarship program starting with the high school class of 2015, there was a noticeable increase in the percentage of young people earning associate degrees a few years later, but in other parts of the country The rate improved only slightly. Tennessee has quickly gone from being a laggard to a leader in getting young people to college, at least until the pandemic hit. (See graph.)
While evaluation of the Tennessee program will likely continue, researchers and program officials point to three lessons learned so far.
Scholarship programs do not help many low-income students financially. The $7,395 federal Pell Grant far exceeds community college tuition in Tennessee, which hovers around $4,500 per year for full-time students. Community college was already free for low-income students, who make up about half of students in Tennessee’s free college program. Like other free college programs across the country, the University of Tennessee is structured as a “last dollar” program, meaning payments are made only after other forms of financial aid are exhausted.
This means that tuition subsidies are primarily given to students from high-income families who are not eligible for Pell Grants. In Tennessee, the source of funding is the state lottery. Approximately $22 million of lottery proceeds went toward community college tuition in the most recent year.
Free tuition alone is not sufficient support. In 2018, Tennessee added coaching and mentoring to provide special support for low-income students. (Low-income students did not receive tuition assistance because other sources of financial aid already covered tuition.) Then, in 2022, Tennessee announced that for students in need Added emergency grants for books and other living expenses (up to $1,000 per student). Additional support for low-income students is funded by state appropriations and private fundraising. The current graduation rate for students who are the first generation in their families to attend college jumped to 34% with this additional support, compared to 11% without it. says the 10-year report.
“Combining financial and non-financial support – mentoring support and coaching support – is really the sweet spot,” said Graham Thomas, head of community and government communications at tnAchieves. “This is a game changer, but the money part is often overlooked.”
Coaching is best done in person on campus. During the coronavirus pandemic, Tennessee launched an online instruction platform, but students did not participate in it. Ben Starling, Chief Content Officer at tnAchieves, said:
The worst-case scenario didn’t happen. When community college was first announced to be free, critics worried that a zero price point would drive students away from non-free four-year colleges. This is bad because the process of returning from a community college to a four-year school can be difficult, with students potentially losing credits and time spent. Research shows that most students are more likely to earn a four-year degree if they enroll at a four-year college. However, the number of bachelor’s degrees did not decrease. It appears that the tuition-free policy may have attracted students who previously would not have gone to college at all, without cannibalizing four-year colleges. However, even though Tennessee’s bachelor’s degree attainment rate is increasing, it remains well below the rest of the nation. (See graph.)
As a side note, Tennessee Promise scholarships are also available to students at a limited number of public four-year colleges that offer associate degrees. Approximately 10% of students in the program take advantage of this option.
Despite some positive signs, Tennessee’s academic performance has not been good in recent years. “Everything that’s happened to enrollment since COVID-19 has sort of wiped out all the benefits of the Tennessee Promise,” said Carruthers, a professor at the University of Tennessee. A combination of pandemic disruption, a strong job market and shifting public opinion about higher education has caused enrollment at community colleges across the country to plummet. Although students are starting to return in Tennessee, community college enrollment remains below 2019 levels.
