§ 49-7-210 — Annual report

(a) The Tennessee higher education commission shall submit an annual report on the condition of Tennessee higher education to the governor and the general assembly. (b) This report, which is known as the Tennessee Postsecondary Education Fact Book, must include data from the state universities, the institutions of the board of regents system, and the University of Tennessee system and their governing bodies and, to the extent possible, from the Tennessee Independent Colleges and Universities Association. The fact book must also include available regional and national information to put Tennessee's data in context. (c) The fact book must address the topics of access, efficiency, productivity, and quality as indicated by, but not limited to, the following performance categories and illustrative indicators: (1) Student preparation, such as freshman class profiles and learning support placement and success rates, by subject area; (2) Student participation, such as college-going rates, overall enrollment, and enrollment by critical student subpopulations; (3) Student progression, such as end-of-term enrollment counts, freshman-to-sophomore retention rates, and the number of students passing credit hour benchmarks under the higher education funding formula; (4) Student success and completion, such as retention and graduation rates, time to degree, credentials awarded, and credentials awarded per one hundred (100) full-time equivalent enrolled students; (5) Workforce participation, such as job placement rates and licensure passage rates; (6) Academic trends, such as student engagement survey results, changes to the academic program inventory, low-producing academic programs, the number and percentage of accredited programs, and the percentage of lower division instructional courses taught by full-time faculty, part-time faculty and graduate assistants; (7) Financing trends, such as state appropriation levels and net tuition revenues, state and other revenue per student, and state and other revenue per awarded credential; and (8) Affordability trends, such as in-state and out-of-state tuition rates, aggregate debt and student default rates, and costs of attendance. (d) The fact book: (1) Must include the amount of any federal appropriations made to, and the amount of any matching funds received by, each federal land-grant institution of higher education in this state for each of the agricultural research, extension, education, and related programs established under: (A) Section 1444 of the National Agricultural Research, Extension, and Teaching Policy Act of 1977 ( 7 U.S.C. § 3221 ); (B) Section 1445 of the National Agricultural Research, Extension, and Teaching Policy Act of 1977 ( 7 U.S.C. § 3222 ); (C) Sections 3(b) and (c) of the Smith-Lever Act ( 7 U.S.C. § 343 ); and (D) The Hatch Act of 1887 ( 7 U.S.C. § 361a et seq.); (2) Must include the amount of any state appropriations made to each federal land-grant institution of higher education in this state for agriculture education; and (3) May include any additional information that may assist the general assembly in providing equitable funding to each of the federal land-grant institutions of higher education in this state. (e) The fact book must be published prior to May 1 each year, or as soon as practicable upon receipt of necessary student data from the systems and other sources. The fact book must be made available in web-based and printable formats.

Legislative History

Amended by 2021 Tenn. Acts, ch. 183, s 8, eff. 7/1/2021. Acts 1992, ch. 739, § 1; 1994, ch. 685, § 3; 2000, ch. 724, § 1; 2011 , ch. 297, § 8; 2012 , ch. 1009, § 3.