If Gov. Bill Haslam has his way, Tennessee will continue to show the nation innovative ways to improve the education of its residents.
In his State of the State address last week, he proposed doubling down on paying for higher education for those who cannot afford it. The Tennessee Promise program already provides free tuition for recent high school graduates at any of the state's two-year community colleges and technical colleges.
Now, the Tennessee Reconnect program would be extended to older adults who for one reason or another never started college or started but dropped out - those who don't have a degree or certificate.
As with the initial Tennessee Promise program, according to Haslam, Tennessee would be the first state to make such a generous offer. Of course, the General Assembly will have to approve it first.
Nevertheless, we applaud Haslam for making this bold step, for continuing to make the education of Tennesseans a priority and for proposing such a move without using any taxpayer money.
The estimated $10 million annual cost would be borne by money in the state lottery's reserve fund.
Some 2 million Tennesseans are eligible for the program, but higher education officials indicated they would focus their recruiting on the more than 900,000 people who have some college credit but no degree. Past academic performance would not be a barrier.
The state already covered the tuition of adults who want to go to a technical college, and that of a specific few who qualify for community college, but this program has a much broader scope.
Tennessee Reconnect would work like Tennessee Promise. Interested students would be required first to fill out a Free Application for Federal Student Aid to see if they qualify for any federal assistance. Whatever tuition is not covered, Tennessee would cover.
In his State of the State address three years ago, Haslam announced the Tennessee Promise program. Since then, more than 33,000 students have taken advantage of it. Potentially, its first students will be graduating this spring.
In its first year, the program drove a 24.7 percent increase of students in state community colleges and a 20 percent increase in students at Tennessee College of Applied Technology (TCAT) centers. That translated into a 10 percent growth in Tennessee public higher education enrollment and a 4.6 percent jump in the state's college-going rate. The latter increase was higher than the previous seven years combined.
Though statistics from all 13 community colleges and 27 TCAT centers are not available, 63 percent of all students who enrolled in college through Tennessee Promise returned for their second year in college (whether they remained in Tennessee Promise or not).
"The results so far," Haslam said in his State of the State address, "are incredibly encouraging."
If the Tennessee Reconnect program achieves the same success, he'll be doubly thrilled. After all, it's helping the governor achieve his broader Drive to 55 push. In that, he hopes 55 percent of the state's population will have some kind of post-secondary degree, certification or attainment by 2025.
The news of such a program should be a boon to proponents of Chattanooga 2.0, who began their movement in late 2015 by announcing that 15,000 jobs presently could not be filled by Hamilton County residents due to lack of training, skills and education. It said further that in the coming years more than 80 percent of jobs paying a living wage ($35,000) in the area would require a degree or certificate after high school.
With the jobs here and the tuition about to be free, what could possibly stop people from taking advantage? Given such head starts, it will be difficult for students coming out of high school or adults who initially didn't choose post-secondary training to say they can't kind find work, they don't qualify for good jobs, or the jobs don't pay enough. The only excuse left will be that they didn't want to put in the effort.
As those who have worked diligently on the Chattanooga 2.0 movement have explained over the past year, post-secondary education and training can lead not only to a job and a living wage but also can help lower poverty, lower crime and improve life in general. And now the Tennessee Reconnect program, assuming it gets legislators' approval, will make those things even more achievable for those who thought the time had passed them by.