By JENELLE GREWELL
News Editor

In a memorandum from Pat Miller the Senior Advisor and Director of Legislative Affairs to Higher Educations Working Group Members on Jan. 8, called Complete College America it stated “Tennessean’s understand: It’s time to retool, not retreat.”

On Thursday, Jan. 21, the Tennessee state Senate unanimously passed Governor’s Phil Bredensen’s proposal for improving higher education in the state.

The memorandum claims with the recession, Tennesseans are attempting to raise their skills and knowledge level and because of this, universities are bursting at the seams.

However, according to the memorandum, Tennessee is 40th in country for completing bachelor’s degrees and 45th in associate degrees.

Implementing performance funding is another recommendation presented by the memorandum.

Tennessee should pay for results by retooling the funding formula for higher education to make it substantially based on performance and outcomes.”

This recommendation was passed in the legislation. According to the IRE page on the APSU Web site, the average graduation of APSU is 28.28 percent.

Hall said it is not clear yet how the funding my performance is going to affect APSU.

“I spoke before both education committees in the House and the Senate. One of things I tried to explain to them was that different types of students tend to graduate at different rates and if you want to measure performance you can’t simply how many graduates come from a certain institution.”

He said a part time student may not graduate as quickly as a full-time student and an adult student may not graduate as quickly as a traditional student because the adult may have a job and family responsibilities.

He said he received a lot of positive feedback state leaders were going to be considerate of differences in students and not measure all institutions the same.

Hall said the law designates the Tennessee Higher Education Commission as the body to create the funding formula and report back to the legislation before the funding goes into affect.

The memorandum said the college graduation rates in Tennessee range from 12 percent for community colleges and 44 percent at four year institutions.

Because of this, the memorandum said, Tennessee has a lower economic growth.

“I think that as APSU produces more graduates, that will serve the economy of Clarksville, Montgomery County and Middle Tennessee,” he said.

He said APSU is an important part of the Middle Tennessee economy.

He said that the new industry Hemlock Semi-Conductor chose to build a new plant in Clarksville was very connected to presence of APSU.

The memorandum said for Tennessee to achieve the national average of 38 percent of adults having an associates degree or higher by 2025, the state will have to annually produce twenty thousand more graduates.

“If Tennessee achieved the national average in degree attainment, its citizens would earn an estimated $6 billion in additional wages and salaries each and every year, generating as much as $400 million in additional tax revenues for the state annually,” it said.

Another recommendation is to develop campus graduation plans.

“The governor should work with the boards and the General Assembly to challenge every college and University in Tennessee to develop within six months campus-level action plans to dramatically increase the number of graduates.”

Hall said he thinks he will be able to achieve the goal of having more graduates.

“Universities have already been working hard in this area, APSU in particular. We focused for a number of years now on student success, but that we mean helping students to stay at APSU and graduate from APSU,” he said.

Hall said he has seen the retention rate increase more than five percent over the past four or five years.

Hall said the law requires the Tennessee Higher Education Commission develop a statewide graduation plan to produce more graduates. “Part of that work each institution including APSU, are required to produce a graduation plan,” he said.

He said for APSU is still not sure what that means but said the Tennessee Higher Education Commission will set a guideline as to what is expected to be produced.

Hall said he is sure the plan will involve all of the campus community and he expects it to involve trying to get more graduates than in the past. “We will see what actual target we will put down,” he said.

The memorandum states one of the recommendations to improve college completion in the state is to create a statewide transfer agreement.

“Students should be able to transfer college courses and programs between institutions without losing hard earned credits,” the memorandum said. This recommendation passed in the legislation.

Hall said the standardizing of general core should not affect APSU too much because APSU has already been working to standardize all the general education requirements with other universities and community colleges.

“Some people are worried in the state that putting so much emphasis on graduating students will make universities basically make everything easier,” Hall said.

“I don’t think that is going to happen. I think if you were try that it would self-defeating and that if you give students less to aim for, they tend to aim less high.”

He said APSU will not try to lower standards, but instead try to make clear to students the end sight APSU wants them to achieve.