Regents urged to use caution in cutting costs
Community college and university presidents in the Tennessee Board of Regents system said yesterday the board should be careful in making any attempts to change how schools offer remedial and developmental instruction.

The presidents said big changes could hurt recent high school graduates as well as non-traditional students who need a refresher course or two before taking on college work.

But the head of Georgia's higher-education system said that state's universities no longer allow traditional freshmen to use taxpayer dollars to learn material they should have mastered in high school.

The comments came on the second and final day of a legislatively mandated board retreat on cutting costs and working more efficiently with state dollars that will be stretched thin for the next few years. Regents heard dozens of proposals from task forces that studied academic excellence, access, accountability, efficiency and other issues.

The board did not take any action, however, and won't vote on a plan to submit to the General Assembly until early December.

The task force on access to higher education recommended the board do away with remedial and developmental instruction as it's now offered, in the form of traditional classes. The panel suggested a system of tutorial and lab programs could save at least $12.5 million a year and be as effective as classroom instruction.

The state defines remedial instruction as help needed by students who have difficulty constructing sentences or doing simple arithmetic. Developmental instruction is for students who struggle to put together paragraphs or compute algebraic functions.

Last fall, 49.4% of all first-time freshmen at state schools — including the University of Tennessee system — took one or more remedial or developmental course.

Guest speaker Stephen Portch, chancellor of the University System of Georgia, said that system's universities recently phased out remedial and developmental instruction for freshmen just out of high school.

''If you're coming out of high school, you've had the opportunity,'' Portch said, though he added that those students still can take remedial and developmental courses at two-year colleges.

James Catanzaro, president of Chattanooga State Technical Community College, said a change could hurt the large numbers of remedial and developmental students who haven't been in school for many years, however. Catanzaro said 22% of the Chattanooga State students taking such classes are 35 or older.

''They need very much the direct interface they can have in class,'' he said.

James Hefner, president of Tennessee State University and a spokesman for the Board of Regents system's six university presidents this year, also advised the board to consider any changes carefully.

The board did not prioritize any of the suggestions it heard. Regents, presidents and others were asked to list the ideas they thought most important and turn them in at today's quarterly board meeting. David Gregory, vice chancellor for administration, said he did not yet know just how staff members would use the information in preparing a draft report due Nov. 1.

Charles Manning, the system's chancellor, said the process was important for the board and for the system, even if it appeared to be moving slowly and awkwardly at times.

''It's a big ship,'' he said of the 45-school, 180,000-student operation. ''It depends greatly on the individual efforts of a lot of people across the system. So this kind of process, which seems as messy as democracy, is ultimately necessary to focus our energies. So I'm pleased with where we are. It's not the end.''