General Education and Transfer Students

Opinions on matters of interest to the university and higher education.

Share your thoughts on this topic or other issues with the provost.

Currently the Knoxville campus is out of synch with the rest of higher education in the State of Tennessee with regard to general education requirements. My view is that our general education requirement is superior to the requirement of the TBR schools, which include all of Tennessee’s community colleges, but that our requirement is hardly a model for institutions of higher education. At some point over the next few years Todd Diacon, the new Vice Provost for Academic Operations, and I will be addressing our general education requirement.

In the short run, however, I am looking at a slightly different issue relating to our policy of enforcing our general education requirement on students who have achieved an associate’s degree at a Tennessee community college and seek admission to Knoxville. My view is that we ought to accept the general education from the community college for students with an associate’s degree and allow them to proceed with work in their major without having to make up deficiencies resulting from the difference between general education requirements in the community college and general education requirements at UT Knoxville.

(Any student who has not achieved an associate’s degree from a community college and who transfers to Knoxville would still have to complete our general education requirements. Articulation for these students would not be at the level of a set of courses, but at the level of individual courses.)

Making this change seems sensible for a variety of reasons.

• The set of requirements in the community colleges does not differ significantly from the requirements on the Knoxville campus.
• Holding students to Knoxville’s general education requirements has detrimental effects on time to degree, prolonging their time at UT, and therefore preventing other qualified students from gaining admission to the campus.
• Some good students are likely deterred from applying to Knoxville because they know that they will have to do additional work outside of their major in order to obtain a degree, and that they will not have to do this additional work at any other public four-year institution in the state (including the other UT campuses).
• Students, especially non-traditional and low-income students, will be better able to plan their college careers, and Knoxville will play a greater role in their plans.
• It would encourage students to remain in a community college until completion of an associate’s degree, providing the student with a better opportunity for successful transition to the four-year institution and making our job easier in integrating them into academics at Knoxville.

There are other reasons that this change would be wise and that relate to higher education in the state. Our campus would gain a great deal of political capital for integrating itself more into the statewide system of higher education in Tennessee. We will facilitate the progress of students through the educational system and help to address the woefully poor performance of our state in producing baccalaureate degrees. Currently our policy can be viewed as punishing deserving students who feel compelled, for family or other reasons, to study at community colleges; changing our policy will be a sign that we are concerned with improving access to the flagship campus for all types of students who have proven themselves worthy.

Knoxville is the elite public campus of higher education in Tennessee; but we must not appear elitist. We do not improve the quality of the campus by rigidly adhering to restrictive educational policies and by discouraging deserving students from attending and succeeding at the State’s flagship institution. Our quality, as I have stated many times in the past, is linked rather to the teaching and research accomplishments of our faculty and to the national and international profile we acquire as a result of these efforts.

This proposed change in policy is not an attempt to fashion Knoxville as an upper-division campus, and it is not part of a plan to increase undergraduate enrollments. It is also not meant to lower our standard of education and to sacrifice our education ideals, which remain unchanged for most of our students. In my view it is simply a sound policy change that has many more advantages for us, for students, and for education in Tennessee, than it has disadvantages.

We have a sound set of general education requirements for our native freshmen who spend four years in Knoxville. Indeed, I am convinced that our general education program is superior to the TBR program, and therefore that students who earn four-year degrees at UT receive a superior education. But the Knoxville campus must also consider itself part of the state educational system and for this reason welcome hard-working students, many of whom have overcome financial and other obstacles while completing a different set of requirements.For these students we should facilitate enrollment in upper-division major courses and the acquisition of baccalaureate degrees by accepting the set of general education requirements earned in connection with an associate’s degree.

21 Jan. 2007