This fact book contains tables and charts with data relevant to student participation, student success, academic and fiscal trends, outcomes funding, etc. The primary state policy levers for addressing the state's educational needs include promoting: (1) productivity and efficiency through an outcomes-based funding formula (2) quality assurance through revised performance funding standards (3) economic and workforce development through responses to a study of labor market supply and demand (4) efficiency and effectiveness through purposeful reporting (5) efficiencies through mission and sector differentiation (6) efficiencies through inter-institutional collaboration and reduced duplication and (7) efficiencies through incentives for extramural support. The overarching goal of the 2010-15 Public Agenda for Tennessee Higher Education is to have Tennessee meet the projected national average in educational attainment by 2025. At the center of these reforms is the need for more Tennesseans to be better educated and trained, while also acknowledging the state's diminished fiscal capacity to support higher education.
In January 2010, the General Assembly passed the Complete College Tennessee Act (CCTA), a comprehensive reform agenda that seeks to transform public higher education through changes in academic, fiscal and administrative policies at the state and institutional level.