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Tennessee Lawmakers Reject Full-Time Completion Plan

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April 26, 2018

A bipartisan group of lawmakers in Tennessee rejected Republican governor Bill Haslam's proposal to strongly encourage the state's scholarship students to graduate in four years, according to the Chattanooga Times Free Press.

The governor's Complete College Act sought to require the state's Tennessee Hope and Tennessee Promise scholarship recipients to complete 30 credits a year. The idea of encouraging students to attend college full-time has been strongly advocated for by Complete College America, which has also pushed for strategies like 15 to Finish, which encourages students to enroll in 15 credits each semester.

Haslam argued that if the state was going to reach its attainment goal of having 55 percent of the state's adults with some type of post-high school degree or certificate by 2025, then Tennessee needed to encourage students to complete 30 credits a year. However, local legislators argued that it often takes students five or six years to complete, and they didn't want to penalize those students.

Ashley A. Smith

Ashley A. Smith, Reporter, covers community colleges, for-profit schools and non-traditional students for Inside Higher Ed. She joined the publication in 2015 after covering government and K-12 education for the Fort Myers News-Press in Florida for three years. Ashley also covered K-12 and higher education for three years at the Marshfield News-Herald in Wisconsin. She has interned with The Flint Journal, USA Today and the Detroit Free Press. Ashley grew up in Detroit and is a 2008 graduate of Michigan State University.