The Tennessee Higher Education Commission announced Monday that the Tennessee Promise program saw a record number of applicants—more than 67,000—from the Class of 2025. The program, launched in 2015, is a last-dollar free tuition scholarship for the state’s community college students.
When the Tennessee Promise application period closed Nov. 1, the program had received approximately 700 more applications than last year.
“We are thrilled to see this level of interest and commitment from the Class of 2025,” Steven Gentile, executive director of the Tennessee Higher Education Commission, said in a press release. “The enthusiasm these students are showing for higher education reflects the success of Tennessee Promise and the growing momentum toward making postsecondary opportunities a reality for all Tennesseans.”
The commission also came out with its annual report on the program’s student demographics and outcomes, which revealed other milestones. Notably, the 2022–23 cohort had the highest retention rate since the program began: 83.8 percent of students earned credentials or stayed enrolled from fall to spring, a 2.5-percentage-point increase over the previous cohort. The report also found that about 18 percent of Tennessee Promise students in the 2023–24 cohort first enrolled at technical colleges, or Tennessee Colleges of Applied Technology, the largest share of any cohort.
(This article has been updated to correct the number of applicants from the class of 2025.)
