Legislators in Tennessee are getting closer to pass the law to help all students to attend Community College for free as reported by Yahoo News on April 5, 2014.  AAEA has consistently supported, suggested and promoted the idea in the past.  Therefore, the it applauded such a plan.  The Association is glad to see the progress toward making higher education more affordable for all US citizens.  If this model becomes a reality, then soon other states will follow suit.  Otherwise, they will experience significant population decrease for families will move out and relocate to other states (such as going to Tennessee) where college education is more affordable. AAEA is eagerly waiting to see which state in the US will pioneer free college education, not just for Associate degree programs. But, for all bachelor or undergraduate degrees.

What does this mean to both state-run and private (profit and non-profit) 4-year colleges?

Several consequences will happen:

1. Majority if not all freshmen students will take their GenEd (General Education) courses at community colleges before transferring to a four-year college of choice. This will significantly lower student loans and partially solve current US $1.2 trillion serious student loans problem.
2. Private Liberal Arts, expensive colleges with lower retention and graduation rate will potentially experience and suffer worse financial crises.
3. For-profit colleges could be wiped out from the competition.
4. Reduction (lay-off) of instructors who teach GenEd classes at 4-year colleges are imminent, but the reverse is true at 2-year higher institutions.
5. Freshmen students’ enrollment will drop significantly at 4-year colleges and the opposite is true at Community Colleges.  However, transferred students’ enrollment may increase at 4-year colleges.
6. Four-year colleges’ recruitment effort will no longer be focused on freshmen degree seeking students, but on transferred students.
7. In the near future, the model for higher education will shift significantly as we have predicted months ago.  Undergraduate program in the US will be run by two entities–community colleges and 4-year colleges.  Freshmen and sophomore classes will be offered by two-year institutions while traditional 4-year colleges will only run upper level classes for junior and senior degree seeking students.  These changes will significantly affect the whole organization structure as one ever known in the past.
8. Management team at traditional 4-year colleges will be forced to change their operational mindset if they want to survive.   As the Association has hypothesized again and again, there is no way out now for not to control their spending.
9. Some 4-year colleges will experience reduction on their revenue generated from federal government such Pell Grants or federal student loans due to decreasing enrollment on GenEd classes (see point #4 above).
10. All of these dynamic changes will trigger new regulations including, but not limited to how and to whom data are reported and new skills needed to manage higher education more efficiently.

This is surely an exciting change that will have a strong support from the American Public.  Aside from what has been mentioned above, many families with college aged children will flock to Tennessee, especially in the Nashville area where several community colleges are situated.

Please let us know your comments!