About Community College Path
What is Community College Path?
Community College Path is a free tool for finding and comparing community college courses across Tennessee. Search by subject or keyword, check which courses transfer to your target university, build a weekly schedule, and find late-start classes still open for registration.
What is Course Auditing?
Auditing a college course means attending classes without receiving a grade or academic credit. You participate in lectures, follow the material, and learn alongside enrolled students — but without exams, graded assignments, or GPA impact.
It's a way to explore subjects you're curious about, build skills for a career change, preview a program before committing, or simply learn something new.
Who Audits Courses?
- -Career explorers — testing a field before committing to a degree or certificate
- -Lifelong learners — pursuing interests in history, art, science, or any subject
- -Professionals — brushing up on skills or learning adjacent topics without needing credits
- -Students — previewing a challenging course before taking it for credit
- -Retirees and seniors — Tennessee residents 65+ may qualify for free tuition under state law
How It Works at Tennessee Community Colleges
Tennessee's 12 community colleges (the TBR system) generally allow course auditing, though policies vary by college. The typical process:
- 1Apply for admission at the college (even auditors need to be in the system)
- 2Browse available courses and pick the one you want to audit
- 3Submit a Course Audit Request form during the add/drop period
- 4Get instructor approval — some courses require a signature or email confirmation
- 5Attend classes and participate (no exams or grades)
What Does It Cost?
At most TBR colleges, audit students pay the same tuition and fees as credit students. Check each college's page for specific cost details.
Tennessee 65+ Tuition Waiver
Tennessee residents aged 65 and older may attend credit courses at TBR community colleges with tuition and most mandatory fees waived on a space-available basis. A small service fee (typically capped around $70 per term) may still apply. We flag this on every college page with links to verify.
Things to Know
- Audited courses do not count toward a degree or appear on your transcript with a grade (you may receive an "AU" notation)
- Financial aid typically cannot be applied to audited courses
- Some courses (labs, clinicals, studios) may not be available for auditing
- You usually cannot switch from audit to credit (or vice versa) after the add/drop period
- Audit seats are subject to availability — credit-seeking students get priority
About Community College Path Tennessee
Community College Path Tennessee is a free tool that helps you search, compare, and plan community college courses across Tennessee. We aggregate course listings from the TBR system and pair them with transfer equivalency data and manually researched audit policies.
Every audit policy on this site includes a "last verified" date and a link to the source. Policies can change, so always confirm directly with the college before enrolling.
This is an independent project and is not affiliated with, endorsed by, or sponsored by the Tennessee Board of Regents (TBR).