Global tech and business development consulting company CGI will open a new domestic delivery hub in Knoxville in the coming years. In exchange for a $27 million investment in the city, the company will create an estimated 300 tech jobs and boost employment opportunities beginning this month.
A key partner in this industrial windfall for Knoxville will be the University of Tennessee’s flagship Knoxville campus, which announced last week that it will be working with local colleges, universities, and businesses to help in the training for the surge in labor needs.
From the Knox News:
“They have been searching for two years for the ideal spot, looking for a place that had a highly skilled workforce, a growing economy, a pro-business environment,” (Tennessee Governor Bill) Lee said. “They found that and more in Knoxville and we are very pleased that they have made this decision. It strengthens Knoxville’s reputation as a leader in technology and in business.”
Just ahead of CGI’s announcement, UT announced that it would be partnering with nearby Tennessee College of Applied Technology and historically Black Knoxville College. The former will help to direct students to UT-Knoxville in specified areas like fiber optics and other technical training opportunities to move from an associate’s to a bachelor’s degree.
The alliance between UT and Knoxville College, however, isn’t as clear. From a press release:
Rooted in equity and reciprocity, the partnership sparks the possibility of great opportunities that will continue to make higher education more accessible to all citizens in the region. Driven by three areas of impact—infrastructure, community engagement, and specialty programs—the institutions will work to create an educational pathway from a technical certificate to an associate’s degree and the many degree offerings at UT.
A series of community engagement initiatives and workshops for students at each institution is under way. As a national leader in digital collections, UT Libraries will provide TCAT and KC students with access to enhance their academic experience. UT will help support the accreditation process of Knoxville College, the area’s only historically Black college or university.
“This strategic partnership with like institutions and like ideas is the catalyst for an educational–technical collective impact model serving youth and adults at all levels. We will put words to action as we educate, empower, and elevate our shared students and the Black experience in Knoxville,” said Leonard Adams, Knoxville College interim president.
It’s a lot of good vibes rhetoric that doesn’t really cover what the partnership is all about. In the most beneficial of doubts, the partnership is a way for UT to reap the benefits of transfer or dual enrollment from both institutions, or perhaps graduate school pipelines from KC.
This seems like the only honorable reason for UT-Knoxville, with its reported $1.7 billion in annual economic impact and an endowment estimated in 2019 of more than $725 million, to have a sudden interest in an embattled HBCU which lost its accreditation in 1997.
For nearly a quarter of a century, Knoxville College has languished in efforts to retain students and to pay off debts. Six years ago, environmental hazards in an academic building paused plans for the school to sell master rights to a private developer in an effort to generate much-needed revenue.
For nearly a quarter of a century and save for a summer commencement speech delivered in 2000 by former KC President Barbara Hatton, UT-Knoxville has remained publicly silent on the plight of the city’s flagship historically Black institution. Perhaps a prior year of pestilence and racial animosity has changed UT’s position on Knoxville College’s value, but it is hard to avoid skepticism about the UT System’s intentions when they are so closely timed with the arrival of a big tech company and its promise of lots of jobs for trained residents, and relatively silent on what support it will lend to help KC reestablish its autonomy.
Separated by less than two miles, these two schools are too geographically close and too financially far apart to easily assume a bond in the spirit of fellowship and shared community interest. When, throughout history, has the better-endowed neighbor looked to publicly extend a hand of support to its sister institution in its darkest hours?
So why do so now? For what reason? And what’s really in it for UT?
