If Tennessee is going to give community colleges greater prominence in the state’s higher education system, the two-year schools need to have their own leadership, Gov. Phil Bredesen said.
There needs to be “much broader use of community colleges as entrée to the four-year schools,” Gov. Bredesen said to the Times Free Press. “One of the ways to make this happen is bring the community colleges under a single management.”
The Tennessee Board of Regents, which maintains the state’s 13 community colleges, should create a vice chancellor for community colleges, he said. The system currently has only a vice chancellor for academic affairs and a vice chancellor for the state’s technology centers.
Board of Regents officials favor creating a new vice chancellor position as long as there is funding to support the senior-level post.
“This is an idea that our community college presidents have wanted for some time,” said Mary Morgan, a spokeswoman for the Board of Regents. “The only problem with doing that has been financial.”