NASHVILLE - Gov. Phil Bredesen's proposed overhaul of higher education is expected to come to the Senate floor for a final vote today.
The move comes on the heels of a compromise that preserves public universities' ability to enter into cooperative research agreements.
House leaders said they think they can move the bill through remaining committees this morning and put the measure on the floor by afternoon as lawmakers seek to wrap up their special session on K-12 and higher education.
The bill's major focus is to use the funding formula to reward colleges and universities that do a good job retaining and graduating students, rather than simply enrolling them.
The bill also elevates the role of two-year community colleges, standardizes many of their courses and requires that the courses be accepted by four-year institutions.
"I really do believe we're making substantive change in higher education and substantive change we'll all be able to see in the next few years," Senate Minority Leader Jim Kyle, D-Memphis, said before Senate Finance Committee members passed the bill unanimously.
It also passed the Senate and House education committees by unanimous votes.
The Complete College Tennessee Act also would end remedial education for struggling students at four-year institutions such as the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga in favor of two-year schools such as Chattanooga State Community College or dual enrollment. The bill also will require colleges and universities to create individual mission statements.
Sen. Kyle said the shift will "cause griping from institutions who need those remedial students in order to hit their budget" because those students "are going to go to community colleges, where it costs less."
The bill orders the Tennessee Higher Education Commission to develop and implement a statewide transfer program between community colleges and four-year universities.
In the Senate Finance Committee, Sen. Bo Watson, R-Hixson, challenged THEC Director Richard Rhoda on that directive, noting that the General Assembly passed a similar provision back in 2000 with a 2001 implementation date.
"This is the same thing we've been talking about and community colleges in my area, Chattanooga State, have been talking to me about this since I came up here in the House," Sen. Watson later said. "This was a challenge that they had ... in terms of getting articulation agreements set up with UT-Chattanooga."
He said he is not interested in passing legislation just to get something "on paper."
"If this is going to be effective, it's got to be implemented," Sen. Watson said.
Dr. Rhoda acknowledged that progress in transferring community college course credits to universities is "not as far along as we would have hoped." He said this legislation has more specifics and will "give us more teeth."
Earlier, a compromise on research at institutions paved the way for the bill's passage. Various lawmakers and institutions were unhappy at being left out of a plan designed to catapult the University of Tennessee-Knoxville into one of the nation's top 25 research institutions.
The original plan would allow about 200 researchers at the Oak Ridge National Laboratory to become UT faculty and create demand for as many as 400 new graduate assistants, who would come from UT. About $6.2 million in one-time funds would be spent to get the proposal off the ground.
The University of Memphis complained that its own efforts to develop a research consortium were being ignored by Gov. Phil Bredesen. Other institutions fretted that their own efforts to secure research grants would be shunted aside.
Language in the bill ensures that won't happen and also allows graduate students in science, math and engineering to seek assistant positions at Oak Ridge.
In response to a question from Sen. Watson, THEC's Dr. Rhoda said that UTC's SimCenter, which seeks to establish next-generation technologies in computational modeling, simulation and design, would not be harmed by the legislation.