Too Early to Tell About Tennessee Promise

Education officials in Tennessee have released data on the Tennessee Promise, a program designed to make community college free for graduating high school seniors in the state. The results were encouraging, but it’s too soon to proclaim a smashing success.

Of the more than 13,000 students who participated in the Tennessee Promise class of 2015, 21.5% graduated with a degree or certificate, an increase over the 13.8% of students who accomplished the same thing the year before the program started. The data also indicated that only 8.3% of students who didn’t enroll in the Tennessee Promise in 2015 were able to earn a degree or certificate in five semesters.

“I have my degree and zero student debt,” one graduate of the program said in a National Public Radio report. “You do have to pay for your books and your parking passes, but that’s a heck of a deal. You can’t beat that.”

On the other hand, the dropout rate for the first Tennessee Promise class was just 2.3% lower than the rate of freshmen who dropped out in 2014. Some in higher ed also argue the data don’t actually show what caused the increase in degrees and certificates attained.

“We don’t have a benchmark for success on this because Tennessee’s the first state,” said Joni Finney, director of the Institute for Research on Higher Education, University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia. “I’m just worried about pulling the carrot out of the ground too soon to see if it’s full grown. I think these programs have to evolve.”

Policy Choices Limiting Promise Programs

Legislative policies may impact states offering free tuition for two-year institutions. Research that looked at 20 existing College Promise programs in 18 states found that some of their requirements could make it harder for some students to participate.

“As debates around Promise programs continue, state legislators serious about spurring enrollment, lowering debt, and addressing inequities in our higher-education system should ensure that proposed Promise programs provide both a clear message and a clear benefit to those who need it most,” wrote Jen Mishory, a senior fellow at the Century Foundation, in The Future of Statewide College Promise Programs: A State Guideto Free College.

The report noted that half the programs studied required students to attend school full time, eliminating part-time students who are more likely to be on their own financially and in need of the additional help to attend. Merit-based requirements and limitations on the degrees or certificates covered by the free-tuition programs can also reduce the number of eligible students.

Using federal Pell Grant dollars or other grants to cover the cost of tuition before the Promise program kicks in is another roadblock for students. The report noted that if Promise dollars went to tuition, lower-income students would then be able to use the grant money on some of the other costs of higher education, such as housing transportation, and books.

“At least in their initial stages, few states have recharged their higher-education investments enough to make significant progress toward a more universal benefit—and each state faces their own unique hurdles to getting there, some more challenging than others,” Mishory wrote. “Without that investment, as states launch programs with rationing policies to contain program costs, the choices they make will have very different impacts on who benefits, how well it measures up against the goals of spurring enrollment and lowering debt, and how their program impacts the progress their state makes in closing gaps in enrollment and attainment rates by race and income.”

High School Grads Continue, If They Can

A sizable majority of high school students are going on to obtain additional education shortly after 12th grade, but the usual culprit—cost—is preventing some students from enrolling in postsecondary classes.

A new study by the U.S. Education Department’s National Center for Education Statistics followed 20,000 ninth-graders from 2009 to 2016, according to a report in Inside Higher Ed. Nearly all (92%) graduated from high school and 72% of them had entered some type of certificate or degree program or other vocational classes by February 2016, when the study concluded.

Not surprisingly, 80% of the students who attended private high schools continued their education, while fewer than 49% of those from public high schools did so. Students who didn’t pursue postsecondary courses often cited insufficient finances as the reason. For 40% of students who started college after high school and then dropped out, lack of money was also the cause.

Personal situations and “work” (presumably schedules) also kept many students from seeking additional training or education. Employment and studies seemed to be a tough combination: Just 7% of the students who went on to postsecondary coursework also held full-time jobs, and only about 25% had a part-time gig while taking classes.

Given the number of nontraditional-aged adults currently attending colleges and universities, no doubt some of the study’s students who haven’t continued on will eventually enroll somewhere. However, some are in a Catch-22 of sorts; even if grants or other aid cover all their educational expenses, 60% of them are still struggling to pay for daily living expenses.