Thirty-seven percent of students who pursued the Promise scholarship program earned a two-year associate’s degree in three years, compared to only 11 percent of students who did not maintain eligibility, often due to paperwork. incomplete financial aid, incomplete service hours that are required, or failure to remain enrolled in college at least part-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 free tuition program was expanded statewide, only 16 percent of Tennessee students who started community college in 2011 had earned an associate’s degree three years later. Graduation rates then rose to 22 percent for students who started community college in 2014. At that time, 27 Tennessee counties had launched their own free tuition programs, but the state policy had not yet taken effect.
By 2020, when statewide free tuition had been in effect for five years, 28 percent of Tennessee community college students had earned a degree in three years. Not all of these students participated in the free tuition program, but many did.
It is unclear whether the free tuition program is the driving force behind the increase in graduation rates. It could be that motivated students enrolled and followed the rules of the scholarship program and still would have graduated in greater numbers without it. It could also be that unrelated national reforms, 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 has been studying the free tuition program in her state. He is currently doing the math to determine whether the program is causing graduation rates to increase, but the signs he is seeing right now give him “reason for optimism.” Using U.S. Census data, he compared Tennessee’s college attainment rates to those of the rest of the United States. In the years immediately following the statewide scholarship program, beginning with the high school class of 2015, there is a striking jump in the proportion of young adults with associate degrees a few years later, while associate degree attainment in other parts of the country improved only slightly. Tennessee quickly went from being a laggard in young adult college attainment to becoming a leader, at least until the pandemic hit. (See graph).
Although there will likely be continued evaluation of the Tennessee program, researchers and program officials point to three lessons learned so far:
- The scholarship program has not helped many low-income students financially. The $7,395 Federal Pell Grant far exceeds annual tuition and fees at Tennessee community colleges, which are around $4,500 for a full-time student. Community college was already free for low-income students, who make up 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 only pays after other forms of financial aid are exhausted.
That means tuition subsidies have primarily gone to students from higher-income families who don’t qualify for the Pell Grant. In Tennessee, the funding source is the state lottery. About $22 million of lottery revenue was used to pay community college tuition in the most recent year.
- Free tuition alone is not enough help. In 2018, Tennessee added training and tutoring for low-income students to provide them with additional support. (Low-income students had not been receiving any tuition subsidies because other sources of financial aid already covered their tuition.) Then, in 2022, Tennessee added emergency grants for books and other living expenses for students in need: up to $1,000 per student. Additional assistance for low-income students is funded through state budget allocations and private fundraising. For students who are the first generation in their families to attend college, current graduation rates have increased to 34 percent with this additional support compared to 11 percent without it, according to the 10-year report.
“Combining financial support with non-financial support — that mentoring support, that training support — is really the sweet spot,” said Graham Thomas, director of government and community relations at tnAchieves. “It’s a game-changer, and that’s often overlooked because of the monetary part.”
Coaching is best done in person on campus. During COVID, Tennessee launched an online tutoring platform, but students did not participate in it. “We learned the lesson that in-person is the most valuable way to build 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 zero pricing would drive students away from four-year colleges, which are not free. That’s bad because the process of transferring from a community college to a four-year school can be complicated and students lose credits and time invested. Studies have 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 decrease. It seems possible that the free tuition policy attracted students who in the past would not have attended college, without cannibalizing four-year universities. However, bachelor’s degree acquisition in Tennessee, while increasing, remains far behind the rest of the country. (See graph).
Additionally, students can also use Tennessee Promise scholarship funds at a limited number of public four-year universities that offer associate degrees. About 10 percent of students in the program take advantage of this option.
Despite all the positive signs for educational attainment in Tennessee, the last few years have not been kind. “Everything that has happened with enrollment since COVID has kind of erased all of the achievements of the Tennessee Promise,” said Carruthers of the University of Tennessee. The combination of pandemic disruptions, a strong labor market, and changing public sentiment about higher education affected enrollment at community colleges across the country. Students have begun returning to Tennessee again, but community college enrollment is still below what it was in 2019.
