As if our higher education system has not endured enough change and transition, Sen. Jamie Woodson recently proposed Senate Bill 3128 in the Tennessee Senate. The bill requires the Tennessee Higher Education Commission to require the Tennessee Board of Regents and the UT board of trustees to change the minimum requirement for undergraduate full-time status from 12 credit hours per semester to 14 credit hours per semester. Pending the approval of the Tennessee Senate, this change could potentially take effect as early as July 1, 2011.

The question is who gets the short end of the No. 2 pencil here? Honestly, it feels like it’s always the student.

Take into account the fact that many first-time freshmen take on the minimum 12 credit hours per semester, so as to maintain the full-time status requirement for the Tennessee Lottery Scholarship.

So many of those students face the fear of losing their lottery scholarships in their first year because they find themselves buckling under the pressure of just those 12 credit hours on top of the other obstacles that they face during their transition from the security of high school into the challenges of college life. So how does this bill work for them? How does it benefit them?

The idea here is that students will graduate sooner with the implementation of this change. It seems that the focus has turned to diminishing the number of years instead of improving the quality of education that students receive.

We cannot continue to make changes to our education system at the expense of diminishing the quality of education to which students have access. It seems to me that our biggest issue is that our focus is consumed with creating a system that benefits the people who run it, and not the students who buy into it.

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