it's another indirect tax

Dean of Students Bill Porter said the increased hours could help students graduate earlier.

Which leads us to Lamar Alexandar's push for a three-year solution.

But if you are one of the large percentage of students who need to work to afford college this could be a deal killer.

Oh, bullshit. In-state students with ACT of 21 or a GPA over 3.0 in high school get $4000 from the Lottery on a tuition of $7850 a year at UT. All you have to do to maintain it is keep a 2.75GPA. At UT. That's a 50% ride for most breathing humans to access a pretty good university education.

As one of many parents writing those tuition checks I certainly don't see the lottery scholarships covering half the ride because room and boarding double the yearly cost of an education.
I ain't bitchin' about tuition costs but the 12 hour safety net for status as a FT student needs to stay in place.

Don't know if it was considered, but one thing that came to my mind is that it may mean fewer students would be covered under their parents health insurance. Most plans cover children up to age 25 if they are full time students.

Between school and chemotherapy and just day-to-day living, 12 hours is about all I can handle. I want to get through school in a goodly amount of time, but some days it is all I can do to make it through the day. An extra 2 hours adds about 4 hours of study time for me. While I understand that at four year institutions class space is limited, and they want to get as many sections open as they can, I have a hard time getting my classes at PSCC due to full classes. And when they do add sections I wind up getting the class only to have them drop it due to not enough enrollment in the class after the beginning of the semester, which sets me back again.

12 hours is a reasonable full-time limit for most of us returning students who do have lives and responsibilities outside of just going to school.

For students coming straight out of high school, yes, they could afford to spend more time in classes...but, that presupposes that they have the maturity to do so. I doubt very much that they have the motivation and drive to take 14 hours of schooling to make this mandate a workable scenario.

I've been torn on this subject since reading about the proposal.

By my count, it requires an average of more than 15 hours a semester to graduate in 4 years. I realize there is no requirement to graduate in 4 years, but certainly plenty of people do it every year. I would also imagine there is some data that shows that the longer than for years it takes, the less likely it is to finish.

I took a minimum of 15 hours every semester. I'll never forget taking 18 hours fall semester of my senior year, including 3 hours for my senior thesis (requirement at MC). My parents couldn't afford to contribute financially to my schooling, so the tax credit wasn't an issue. The more hours I took, meant fewer semesters of tuituon. I worked two part-time jobs a year and commuted 45 minutes to school. It's possible, but certainly not for everyone.

All that being said, I will counsel my children (God willing) to move slower. I missed out on the memories that 12 hour semesters would have afforded.

I can't get worked up about this issue one way or the other.

I understand what Mello's saying about the difficulty of finding open classes at some TN universities, and I understand Tali's unique problems, too.

Still, it seems that the cost of a "four year" education would be higher in the long run if students DON'T carry enough credit hours to graduate in four years? This seems especially true for students living on campus and therefore incurring dorm costs and meal card costs for five or six years, rather than just four? And the highest possible costs would seem to be be incurred by students taking this long to graduate, living on campus, and actually financing these basic living expenses (dorm/meal card), on top of financing their tuition/books?

Also, my assumption is that if this 14-hour minimum became law, student grant and/or loan amounts would very soon be upped in proportion to the increased per-semester cost at a given university?

It sure sounds like the 14-hour minimum would save students and their families $$$ in the end.

Everything we are reading on Federal Student Aid declares a student to be full time at 12 credit hours.