Audio: John Petersen, UT President, and Roger Brown, UTC Chancellor, meets with the Chattanooga Times Free Press editorial board.

If the 12-hour tuition cap is removed at UTC and a 7 percent tuition hike is enacted, in-state students who take 15 hours of classes could pay nearly $700 more each semester.

The average student in the UT system takes 14 hours, UT President John Petersen said, and even though removing the tuition cap could increase students’ financial burden, keeping the cap is both inefficient and costly.

Under the cap, once a student pays for 12 credit hours, any other credit hours taken the same semester are free.

“Capping at 12 hours is a bad idea,” said Dr. Petersen, who spoke Monday with reporters and editors at the Times Free Press. “Philosophically, you need to take the cap off.”

In 2008, more than 7,300 students were enrolled full-time at the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga, in contrast with 893 part-time students, said UTC spokesman Chuck Cantrell. Many full-time students take more than 12 hours of classes, he said.

However, while some students use the tuition cap to save money on higher education, some take advantage of it, Dr. Petersen said. Students will register for more classes than they need and drop out of several toward the end of the semester, Dr. Petersen said.

“Students can go in there and register for 18 or 20 hours and jettison three-quarters the way through the semester because there is no penalty,” he said.

The students that leave classes tie up professors’ and teachers’ valuable time, he said.

Each semester, more than 900 class seats at the University of Tennessee at Knoxville and between 400 and 500 seats at UTC are vacated, he said.

The Tennessee Board of Regents, which oversees the state’s two-year college system, is in a similar situation. At the University of Memphis, more than 1,800 students drop classes each semester, said Mary Morgan, a spokeswoman for the Board of Regents, which oversees the university.

“Students routinely sign up for more hours than they intend to take, since it costs nothing to do so,” according to a statement from the Board of Regents. “Then after a few weeks, they decide which courses to drop. By that time, it is too late for other students to take those seats.”

In December, the Board of Regents voted to end the 12-hour tuition cap, but officials said they have not decided what to charge per credit hour. If state budget cuts don’t worsen, the cost of per-hour tuition may go down at some institutions, Ms. Morgan said.

The UT system also may lower the cost of tuition per credit hour if the tuition cap is lifted, Dr. Petersen said.

The possibility of removing the tuition cap and increasing the cost of tuition will continue to be discussed among UT officials before the February board of trustees meeting. On Wednesday, a committee will meet in Knoxville to discuss the criteria for academic program cuts.

Dr. Petersen said no programs currently are slated for elimination, but if the state enacts more budget cuts, there likely will be academic programs on the chopping block.

Board members probably will vote on any program cancellations in June, he said.

“We are trying not to slice the budget ... we are going in and cutting pieces off,” he said.

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