Education Week - December 9, 2015 - 15

GOVERNMENT & POLITICS

'Promise' Program Boosts Enrollment at Tenn. Colleges
More than 16,000 students
received free tuition
Tennessee has managed to get more students to community college this fall with its
new Tennessee Promise program and its offer
of free tuition.
The next hurdle is making sure they get
through.
As the state enters the second year of Tennessee Promise, officials are fine-tuning the
program-increasing parent involvement, extending mentoring to college freshmen, and
requiring structured advising on campus,
among other changes.
Community colleges also are hiring more
support staff and trying new strategies to retain students, as officials await news of how
this first crop of students fares by semester's
end.
"This has now got to be about student success. It can't just be about enrollment," said
Mike Krause, the executive director of Tennessee Promise, the first statewide program
of its kind to offer two years of free tuition
to high school graduates who fulfill program
requirements. The program has been held up
as a model for the Obama administration's
national proposal for free community college.
(See Education Week, March 4, 2014.)
"We are excited about the number of students enrolling," Krause added, "but that
doesn't improve our workforce. The number of
graduates will improve our workforce."

Numbers and Next Steps
Once retention rates are in, the program can
also be a "powerful window back to K-12" to
let districts know the college-readiness levels
of their students, Krause said.
More than 16,000 students took advantage
of Tennessee Promise this fall, boosting firsttime freshmen enrollment in state higher
education programs by 10 percent overall
compared with the previous year. The great-

David Grace/Kingsport Times News/AP-File

By Caralee J. Adams

Tennessee Gov. Bill Haslam, a Republican, speaks at Sullivan Central High School in Blountsville, Tenn., last year before a ceremonial signing of
the bill that created the Tennessee Promise program. Considered a national model for President Obama's proposal of free community college,
Tennessee's program is the first statewide effort to offer two years of free tuition to high school graduates.

est increases were at the state's community
colleges, where the freshman class grew by
nearly 25 percent over last year's class.
But many four-year colleges and universities saw a decline. At the schools in the state
university system, for instance, enrollment
dropped by 4.6 percent this fall.
As the deadline closed in early November
for next year's class, interest in the program
remained high, with 59,635 high school seniors applying-slightly more than last year's
58,000 applicants.

In the state's community colleges, about 14
percent of the Tennessee Promise students
are African-American-close to the percentage of African-American students in the state's
overall community college population, which
is 18 percent. The share of enrolled Tennessee
Promise students in community colleges who
are Hispanic is 4 percent, compared with 3 percent overall for community colleges. Programwide, just over half of the enrolled scholarship
students come from families with incomes low
enough to qualify them for federal financial aid.

"In cohort one, we reached the kind of students we were hoping to reach," Krause said
of the demographics. "Tennessee Promise is
about changing a culture and how students
see their own future."
Tennessee Promise is a last-dollar scholarship program, so students tapped into other
aid, such as Pell Grants, first. The state program awarded an average of about $1,020
per student to fulfill the promise of covering
tuition. To keep the state from leaving Pell
PAGE 18 >

High Court Showdown Looms Again on Race-Based Admissions
that a federal appeals court apply
more-searching scrutiny to the uniThe U.S. Supreme Court this week versity's plan that uses a "holistic redives back into a major case on af- view" for a small proportion of places
firmative action in education, with in each entering class in which an inthe possibility of a landmark ruling dividual's race can sometimes be the
governing the use of race at the col- make-or-break factor in admissions.
lege and K-12 levels.
Or, the result in Fisher v. Uni- Reliance on Race
versity of Texas at Austin (Case No
14-981) could be yet another increAbigail Fisher, a white applicant
mental muddle that postpones the who was denied admission to UTjudgment day for race-conscious Austin in 2008, has appealed the
policies.
ruling of the U.S. Court of Appeals
"The Fisher case has brought sur- for the 5th Circuit, in New Orleans,
prises at every stage, and one should that again upheld the UT-Austin
be prepared for additional surprises," plan.
said Edward Blum, the founder of a
Fisher, who went on to graduate
nonprofit group, the Project on Fair from Louisiana State University
Representation, that is behind the and is now a business analyst in
challenge to the race-conscious ad- Austin, maintains that she lost out
missions program at the University on admissions based on the uniof Texas at Austin.
versity's impermissible reliance on
In its first decision in the case, in race. Among the many arguments
2013, the Supreme Court demanded that Fisher's lawyers make are that

By Mark Walsh

The Fisher case has brought surprises
at every stage, and one should be prepared
for additional surprises."
EDWARD BLUM
Project on Fair Representation

UT has offered shifting rationales
for its race-conscious holistic-review
program.
"UT has never been clear about
precisely why it needs to use racial
preferences," they argue. "Strategically vague policies, shifting
rationales, and stereotypical assumptions about the quality of
high-achieving students in majority-minority or poor high schools
should not be permitted to defeat

Ms. Fisher's individual right to
equal protection."
The challengers contend that
UT has been unsatisfied with the
state of Texas' race-neutral policy
of granting automatic admission to
any state campus to those who finish at the top of their high school
classes. (That program has been
modified with respect to UT-Austin,
and currently only those in the top
7 percent of their high schools are

guaranteed admission at the flagship campus.)
The challengers characterize the
university as seeking "intra-racial
diversity" or "diversity within diversity" by using the holistic-review
program to admit African-American
and Latino students from more-privileged backgrounds than those arriving on its campus from some of the
state's poorest communities because
of the percentage plan.

Pushing Back
UT-Austin, in its Supreme Court
brief, says the charge that it is favoring "privileged minorities" is unfounded.
"UT simply seeks minority students
with different backgrounds, different
experiences, and different perspectives," the university argues. "That is
precisely the diversity that this court
PAGE 18 >

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