NASHVILLE, Tenn. — Enrollment is up almost 5 percent at Tennessee colleges and universities, but the state Board of Regents wants higher graduation rates to go with the increased number of students.
Universities have almost 95,000 students signed up compared with this time last year and nearly 100,000 students signed up for classes at community colleges across the state.
The Tennessean reports that schools don’t have the money to hire new students or build buildings, but are managing by bringing in adjunct professors, promoting online classes and adding extra classes to the schedules until the school day.
“We’ve been asked well, we haven’t been asked, we’ve been told to do more with less,” said Dr. Warren Nichols, president of Volunteer State Community College, where enrollment jumped 20 percent last year and 5 percent this fall.
In January, the state passed sweeping higher education reforms that require public colleges and universities to work together to improve Tennessee’s dismal graduation rate. Universities that fail to graduate students within six years, or community colleges that fail to get students an associate’s degree within three, will suffer state funding cuts.
Fewer than a quarter of Tennesseans have bachelor’s degrees, putting the state ninth from the bottom in the nation for educational attainment, according to a 2008 Census survey.
Volunteer State has been instructed to improve its graduation rate by 3.9 percent every year, a tall order when it enrolls so many who may sign up for a class or two with no intention of earning a degree. Those students count as dropouts under the new formula.
