Gov. Phil Bredesen has been a reformer.
He tackled a cost-spiraling health plan —- TennCare — and with some criticism reined in a program that potentially would have come close to siphoning off new revenue growth. With the current economic downturn, the state’s fiscal crisis would have been amplified by some unknown multiple without health care refinements.
Faced with the inequity that was built into the formula for funding K-12 public education, the governor created a new, more equitable approach for state support. The multiphased program has been slowed down because of lagging sales tax revenues, but even the initial phase of BEP 2.0 has pushed new dollars to school systems such as Hamilton County that historically were penalized by pockets of prosperity.
A final reform opportunity is on the horizon — higher education.
In the closing months of his first term, Gov. Bredesen sketched out an approach to reduce bureaucracy, scale back duplicative classes and graduate more students. Now well into his second term, he is faced with trying to jumpstart higher education changes, but faces a timeclock that inches toward his final year in office.
His reform efforts so far have been complete actions, but the governor cannot complete reform of higher education. It will be up to his successor whether to complete the task.
When he focused on health care and K-12 education, Gov. Bredesen outlined and implemented the reforms. For higher education, some of the grander visions of a single administrative team may have to be scaled back or even put off to the side. For him, the objective is not the rhetoric but the completion of reforms.
Earlier, he sketched out a higher education approach that might restructure the somewhat dual, competitive systems of the University of Tennessee and the Board of Regents. Oversight by the Tennessee Higher Education Commission was on the table for elimination.
He targeted duplicative programs and the so-called boutique graduate degree programs that cater to a few students. He focused on raising the number of college graduates and the goal of rewarding retention and not recruitment of students. State dollars would be tied to retaining students and graduating students and not rewarding institutions for running up the numbers at the front-gate turnstile.
But time is the enemy for a governor who is looking to make a difference in higher education.
The interim president of UT, Jan Simek, discussed moving
the focus from the number of students who enter in a freshman class to those who are retained and graduate. In the past, he said, the incentive has been to get bigger but not necessarily better. “Classrooms will be preserved and the faculty will be preserved, but we will be different,” Dr. Simek said.
As he puts the touches to a version of higher education reforms, Gov. Bredesen is pushing to move the emphasis from enrollment to outcomes.
The objective, for example, is not to dismantle existing post-graduate offerings, but to limit the creation of new programs that serve few students. There also is consideration of breaking the 30-minute drive time rule, thus removing the comfort of offering identical courses at colleges and universities within a narrow geographic area.
There is another emphasis in the reform plans that raises the profile of two-year community colleges. Earlier, Gov. Bredesen proposed combining community colleges with the state’s technical schools and offering tuition-free admission, but the initiative never advanced past the idea stage.
In a potential higher education reform plan, community colleges serve as a means to attract more students who are better prepared for that environment compared to the four-year institution approach. An important step in making this transition is to remove some of the stigma that has been attached to two-year schools by providing dorms, creating a campus life, and bringing more equity to the lottery scholarships that now favor the four-year institutions.
The community colleges, unlike in his earlier approach, remain within the Board of Regents system, making the articulation between two-and-four year schools easier.
This may not be the total reform that at one time was envisioned by Gov. Bredesen, but it is a clear, concise step that adds higher education to an administration of reform.
E-mail Tom Griscom at tgriscom@timesfreepresss.com.
I disagree with the idea of adding dorms to community/technical colleges. These schools are traditionally attended by local students who would not have the need/desire to live on campus. These students are, on average, older than university students and have jobs and families that connect them to their communities.
What should be done with these colleges is to enfold them into the state university system. The educational standards should be raised, and classes standardized throughout the state university system so that students transferring to four-year state colleges aren't forced to re-take classes.
Currently, the disparity in the quality and types of classes being offered can add one to two years to a transferring student's education. That equates to more than $5,000-$10,000 in extra tuition at UTC's current rates. It makes me wonder whether the motivation is financial or educational.
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