Tennessee’s move to give public universities their own governing board will likely end the state’s tradition of students having a real voice in higher education, says one member of the Tennessee Board of Regents.
The soon-to-be created 10-member governing boards will have the power to set student fees, tuition and approve multi-million dollar construction projects — in the same way TBR does now.
But, unlike the Board of Regents, the new university boards will not have voting student members.
That doesn’t sit well with Nick Russell, student from Tennessee Tech University and voting-member of the Tennessee Board of Regents, which governs 40 community colleges and six public universities.
He says a non-voting student on a university board is almost irrelevant.
“My biggest concern is that no one will try to reach out to the student,” Russell said. “Without a vote you don’t really matter.”
“They say it’s too much responsibility or the student’s won’t be able to catch up to speed, but students know more about what’s going on at their campus than alumni trustee members who don’t come around all that often,” he said.
Most of the funding for Tennessee’s public universities comes from tuition and student fees.
Students should get at least one vote in how their money is spent, Russell said.
“The student’s are the largest stake holder in a university,” Russell said.
More than 60 percent of the University of Memphis’ budget comes from student fees and tuition. Less than 33 percent comes from state appropriations.
Attempts to amend the FOCUS Act, the state bill that will break up TBR, is working its way through the state legislature.
So far, attempts to amend the bill to allow students to become voting members have failed. FOCUS passed the Tennessee House Thursday. Russell said the law is a “step back” from real student representation in higher educations.
Right now, all three of Tennessee’s higher-education governing bodies have voting student members. One of the 10 voting members of the Tennessee Board of Regents is a student.
A student has served on the board of regents since the 1970s. The University of Tennessee, which governs UT Knoxville, Chattanooga, Martin and the Health Science Center at Memphis, has two student representatives who serve two-year staggered terms and are allowed to vote on the board of trustees during their second year.
The Tennessee Higher Education Commission, which governs the UT system and TBR, also has two student members who are able to vote on their second year.
This kind of representations on these boards show “who the focus of these systems are,” Russell said. “Why should we take a step back?”
Tennessee is among the few southern states that have voting students on its board of regents or board of trustees (different institutions across the country uses different names to describe the same governing boards).
Georgia and Mississippi, which both have separate governing boards for community colleges and universities, have no student members on their board of trustees.
Arkansas, which has six boards of trustees and one higher educations governing board, has no student members in any of their systems.
In Alabama, only Auburn University and Alabama A&M University have student trustees, but they are non-voting members.
Florida, however, has a voting student trustee in every public university and one in the statewide higher education governing board.
