Thirty-seven percent of students who adhere to the Promise scholarship program receive a two-year degree within three years, compared to only 11 percent of students who did not maintain eligibility, often due to incomplete financial aid paperwork, incomplete work hours. required or failing to remain enrolled in college for at least some time. Tennessee projects that since its inception, the scholarship program will have produced a total of 50,000 college graduates by 2025, administrators told me in an interview.
Before the tuition-free program rolled out nationwide, only 16 percent of Tennessee students who started community college in 2011 had earned an associate’s degree three years later. The graduation rate then rose to 22 percent for students who started community college in 2014. By this time, 27 counties in Tennessee had established their own free tuition programs, but the statewide policy had not yet taken effect.
By 2020, when statewide free tuition has been in effect for five years, 28 percent of Tennessee community college students will have graduated within three years. Not all of these students participated in the free tuition program, but many did.
It is not clear whether the free tuition program is driving the increase in graduation rates. It is possible for motivated students to sign up and abide by the rules of the scholarship program and still be able to graduate at higher rates without it. It’s also possible that unrelated changes across the country, from increases in federal financial aid to academic advising, have helped more students reach the finish line.
I spoke with Celeste Carruthers, an economist at the University of Tennessee Knoxville, who was studying a free tuition program in her home state. He’s currently crunching the numbers to see if the program increases graduation rates, but the signs he’s seeing now give him “reason for optimism.” Using US Census data, he compared Tennessee’s college success rates to the rest of the United States. In the years immediately following the statewide program, beginning with the high school class of 2015, there is a dramatic jump in the share of young adults with associate degrees a few years later, while associate degree attainment elsewhere in the nation has improved little. Tennessee quickly went from being lazy to finding a new leader — at least until the pandemic hit. (See graph.)
While there may be further evaluation of the Tennessee program, researchers and program officials point to three lessons learned so far:
- The scholarship program did not help many low-income students financially. A federal Pell Grant of $7,395 far exceeds the annual tuition and fees at Tennessee’s community colleges, which run to about $4,500 for a full-time student. Community college was already free for low-income students, who represent about half of the students in Tennessee’s free college program. Like other free college programs across the country, Tennessee’s is structured as a “last dollar” program, meaning it pays only after other forms of financial aid have been exhausted.
That means the scholarship has gone to students from high-income families who don’t qualify for a Pell Grant. In Tennessee, the source of funding is the state lottery. About $22 million in lottery money was used to pay for community college tuition in a recent year.
- Free education alone is not enough help. In 2018, Tennessee added tutoring and mentoring for low-income students to give them more support. (Low-income students had previously not received tuition assistance because other sources of financial aid already covered their tuition.) Then, in 2022, Tennessee added emergency grants for books and other living expenses for needy students — up to $1,000 per student. Additional aid for low-income students is funded through the federal budget and private fundraising. For first-generation students in their families to attend college, current graduation rates rose to 34 percent with this extra support compared to 11 percent without it, the 10-year report said.
“Matching financial support with non-financial support — that mentoring support, coaching support — is really the sweet spot,” said Graham Thomas, community and government relations officer at tnAchieves. “It’s a game changer, and that’s often overlooked in the financial sector.”
Coaching is best done on campus. During COVID, Tennessee launched an online learning platform, but students did not engage with it. “We’ve learned our lesson that being personal is the most important way to go when building relationships,” said Ben Sterling, chief content officer at tnAchieves.
- The worst case scenario did not happen. When free community college was first announced, critics worried that the zero price tag would lure students away from four-year, non-free colleges. That’s bad because the process of transferring from a community college back to a four-year school can be difficult as students lose credits and time invested. Research has shown that most students are more likely to complete a four-year degree if they start at a four-year institution. But the number of bachelor’s degrees did not fall. It seems that the goal of free education has attracted students who had never attended college before, except for four-year colleges. However, attainment of bachelor’s degrees in Tennessee, while increasing, remains below the national average. (See graph.)
As an aside, students are also able to use their Tennessee Promise tuition funds at a limited number of four-year community colleges that offer associate degrees. About 10 percent of the program’s students use this option.
Despite all the positive signs of educational attainment in Tennessee, recent years have not been kind. “Everything that’s happened to enrollment since COVID has taken away all the benefit from Tennessee Promise,” said Carruthers of the University of Tennessee. A combination of pandemic disruptions, a tight job market and changing public sentiment about higher education drove community college enrollments across the country. Students have begun to return to Tennessee, but community college enrollment is still below what it was in 2019.
