Tennessee College-Going Rate on the Rise
By Sara Weissman The Tennessee Higher Education Commission recently reported the largest year-over-year increase in the state’s college-going rate since the 2015 launch of Tennessee Promise, a last-dollar free tuition scholarship for community college students. More than half—56.7 percent—of Tennessee public high school graduates in the Class of 2023 immediately enrolled in college, an increase of 2.4 percentage points over the Class of 2022, according to the commission’s report. Steven Gentile, executive director of the Tennessee Higher Education Commission, partly credited an initiative called the Momentum Year, established by the commission and the nonprofit Tennessee Student Assistance Corporation, which administers state financial aid,