More than 9,000 Tennessee adults have signed up for free technical college under Tennessee Reconnect, a new statewide grant that covers tuition at any of the state’s 27 colleges of applied technology. State officials are calling it a marketing success.
Students at technical colleges, or TCATs, earn certificates and degrees in fields including welding, cosmetology or information technology. The schools don’t have big advertising budgets, says associate vice-chancellor Carol Puryear, and instead rely mostly on word-of-mouth recruiting.
That’s not always effective. After Colleen Gill was laid off from a longtime job, she found out about TCAT Nashville at the unemployment office, she says. But none of her friends had heard of it.
“They were going, ‘Where’s that?’ Well, it’s right next to Nashville State Community College, and everybody knows where that is, but nobody knows where TCAT is,” she says.
In recent months, however, the state has been marketing Tennessee Reconnect and — by extension — the technical colleges. The governor went on a promotional tour last month, and private business coalitions have paid for radio commercials.
The technical schools have noticed the boost in recognition, Puryear says.
“We have gotten a lot of attention,” she says. “We have just really enjoyed the calls coming in, the people coming in, the interest. It has really helped to spark that.”
The statewide marketing push to enroll in a technical college ends May 15, but the grant is ongoing, says executive director Mike Krause. All eligible students can, from now on, attend a TCAT tuition-free.
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