Tennessee Universities Want Specifics On Haslam’s Proposal To Give Them More Independence

Six of the state’s biggest universities could be given more autonomy.

Gov. Bill Haslam announced Tuesday that he’s working on a plan to break up the Tennessee Board of Regents system and let its four-year colleges go out on their own, although the details on the proposal are still fuzzy. 

That would leave TBR to focus solely on community and technical colleges.

The Governor’s Proposal

The job of running a half-dozen universities is too big for one organization, Haslam says, so he proposes giving each school its own board of directors — each with the power to raise money, set tuition and decide what facilities to build.

“Tennessee State’s mission looks very different than ETSU’s. The University of Memphis looks different than Austin Peay,” Haslam said Tuesday. “Having each institution have its own board will give them both the flexibility and the autonomy within the greater structure that I think can drive greater education results.”

The plan would affect Tennessee State University, Middle Tennessee State University, Austin Peay State University, Tennessee Technological University, East Tennessee State University and the University of Memphis.

The governor says decentralizing the TBR system would make each one more efficient, though he concedes there’s a risk they’ll start competing with each other for state funds. “One of the things we will address from the very beginning is to not have it turn into a free-for-all.”

Haslam says the Tennessee Higher Education Commission would have to sign off on any major construction project before it could begin. It would also be given a greater role in coordinating higher education programming across the state.

All of this, Haslam argues, will let the Tennessee Board of Regents focus on the state’s 13 community colleges and 27 technology centers. Those two-year schools have taken on greater importance, the governor says, as his administration has pushed to increase the portion of Tennesseans with post-secondary degrees.

State lawmakers are praising the proposal. Senate Speaker Ron Ramsey and House Speaker Beth Harwell spoke after the governor unveiled his proposal Tuesday at the state Capitol. They pledged to work with him to advance it through the legislature next spring.

Questions From Colleges

Tennessee isn’t the first state to consider decentralizing its higher education system, but Will Doyle, an associate professor of higher education policy at Vanderbilt, says it’s usually less of a top-down approach.

“Most of the time when this has happened in other states, the institutions themselves lobbied pretty hard for it,” he says. For example, they might propose giving up some state funding in exchange for more autonomy.

In Tennessee, the university that seemed to be pushing for the change is the University of Memphis. It has been asking for more autonomy for a long time. (In a statement, its president called this proposal “historic.”) 

Haslam tells reporters that Memphis indeed inspired the idea, but he decided it might help other universities work better as well.

“Once we started looking, we realized we can’t do something just for Memphis,” he says.

Still, he didn’t elaborate on how involved the other universities were in this proposal. The president of ETSU, Brian Noland, says he’s talked to the governor generally about higher education — and he supports the decentralization plan — but he doesn’t have any specifics. Austin Peay, Tennessee State, MTSU and Tennessee Tech all also said they’re waiting for more details.

“Like any change, it’s a little uncertain right now,” says Lori Shull, a spokeswoman with Tennessee Tech. “This will give us an increased responsibility, but [also] some autonomy and some opportunities to be flexible and responsive.”

Meanwhile, Chancellor John Morgan of the Tennessee Board of Regents, who currently oversees these universities, gave a less enthusiastic response. He was out of town when the governor made the announcement, and he sent a statement diplomatically defending the current structure. 

I am proud of our system’s ability to collaborate and operate efficiently across all of our institutions in support of common goals and aspirations,” he wrote. “We can expect complex and extensive conversations as this process unfolds.”