Sen. Andy Berke, D-Chattanooga, and Minority Leader Sen. Jim Kyle were featured in a UT-Knoxville Daily Beacon Feb. 5 article discussing higher education reform passed during the legislature's special session on education.
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Donesha Aldridge - Staff Writer
UT and other colleges in Tennessee will benefit from the Complete College Tennessee Act of 2010 that Gov. Phil Bredesen signed into action during the 106th Tennessee General Assembly special session at the end of last month.
Tennessee Sen. Jim Kyle from Memphis said the act will make changes to the relationships among colleges, eliminate remedial classes and provide a more uniform system for schools across the state.
“With these new laws in place, we’ve now got a landmark opportunity to move Tennessee public education forward in a dramatic and positive direction,” Bredesen said in a press release from the Governor’s Communication Office.
Russ Deaton, director of fiscal policies and facilities analysis for the Tennessee Higher Education Commission, said one of the major changes is the way higher education will receive funding.
Deaton said higher education funding is based on the enrollment levels of each school. With the new law passed, colleges will be funded based on the productivity level of each year.
Deaton explained that the productivity level is determined by how many degrees and graduates are produced from each college.
Tennessee Sen. Andy Berke from Chattanooga said when universities were previously funded on enrollment-based principles, the number of students that were enrolled was tallied on the 14th day of classes. The higher the enrollment, the better funding the school would receive.
Berke said each school will now be given a separate formula to calculate based on their missions. Since all universities are different and have different needs, each formula will be able to cater to the needs of individual schools.
“Our goal is to make sure administration listens to students’ needs and cooperates with them more,” Berke said. “Our main goal is to create higher graduation rates in Tennessee.”
Deaton said students will directly benefit from the new dual transfer policy that allows college students across the state who want to transfer from a community college to a four-year university to transfer and enroll as a junior if they have received the adequate amount of credits.
However, Kyle said this transfer policy does not apply to UT.
Section nine of the act, which can be found on the Tennessee Board of Regents’ Web site, states that this act will “foster economic growth by significantly increasing the number of science, technology, engineering and mathematics doctoral students produced at the University of Tennessee, Knoxville and other state universities.”
One of the changes the act listed focused on UT and its involvement with Oak Ridge National Laboratory. A new collaboration will establish an energy science center for graduate research. Kyle said jump-start funding will be given to help the new UT-ORNL partnership.
