Tennessee would be the only state in the country to charge no tuition or fees to incoming students under the proposal by Gov. Bill Haslam, a Republican, which policy analysts called a big step toward a better-educated work force.
“This is the best idea to boost participation in higher education in a generation,” said Terry W. Hartle, senior vice president of the American Council on Education, a major association of public and private colleges.
Mr. Haslam made it the centerpiece of his State of the State address on Monday, calling for two years of free schooling for state residents with high school diplomas or equivalency degrees, without regard to academic credentials or financial need. The change requires approval by the state legislature, whose leaders reacted favorably to the idea.
State of the States
The State of the State speech, that annual display of policy and pride, can be a call to action, plea for patience and, in some cases, an early look at a re-election platform.
“We just needed to change the culture of expectations in our state,” the governor said Tuesday in a telephone interview. “College is not for everybody, but it has to be for a lot more people than it’s been in the past if we’re going to have a competitive work force.”
Community college is fairly inexpensive; a full year’s tuition and fees in Tennessee are about $3,800, and the national average is $3,300. Federal Pell grants and other scholarships make the net price zero, or a very small sum, for most students.
But even for students who pay little or nothing, eliminating tuition and fees is financially significant, because Pell and some other types of grants can be used to pay for books, supplies, travel and other costs, said Jennifer Ma, a policy researcher at the College Board and co-author of its annual report on college prices.
“Tuition and fees are only part of the cost of attendance,” she said. “There’s an opportunity cost, because they’re giving up jobs, and there are other expenses.”
Governor Haslam argued that for students, the importance of his plan is not just economic, but psychological. Students may not be aware that the sticker price of college is not the true price, and explaining the difference can get complicated.
“It is more affordable than most people think, but if they don’t know that, that doesn’t help us,” he said. “If we can go to people and say, ‘This is totally free,’ that gets their attention.”
The cost to the state is fairly low — the governor estimated $34 million a year, paid for by diverting surplus revenue from the state lottery. He said the state would work with private foundations to provide mentors to students to advise them on navigating college.
In addition to its 13 degree-granting community colleges, Tennessee has one of the nation’s most robust systems of vocational schools, the 27 Colleges of Applied Technology, which are a national leader in graduation rates. The governor’s tuition-free plan includes those technical schools.
Mr. Haslam also called for Tennessee’s public colleges to make a new effort to recruit the state’s nearly one million adults who have some college credits but ended their educations without earning degrees or professional certificates. And he proposed expanding a program that gives particular help to struggling high school students so they can go to college without needing remedial classes that do not earn college credit; studies have shown that students who take remedial courses are far less likely to graduate.
Mr. Haslam is one of several Republican governors promoting increased spending on certain programs as a response to growing inequality in incomes and opportunity — an issue more commonly associated with Democrats — that puts them at odds with their party members in Congress. Republicans in several states have moved to expand prekindergarten classes.
But while some of those lawmakers are struggling politically and looking for ways to broaden their appeal, Mr. Haslam, first elected in 2010 and seeking re-election this year, is very popular in his state and has not yet drawn a prominent opponent. In a Vanderbilt University poll conducted Nov. 20 to Dec. 5, 61 percent of Tennessee voters approved of the job he was doing, including 48 percent of Democrats.
California had junior colleges without tuition or fees for decades, and the City University of New York did not charge for either two- or four-year colleges until the 1970s.
