By AP
Nashville, TN – Tennessee's Chamber of Commerce & Industry is the recipient of a Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation grant totaling over a quarter million dollars. The group's nonprofit foundation plans to use the funding to promote the need for increased college completion rates in the state. Chamber officials say Tennessee does a better job of attracting students to college than making sure they graduate, citing statistics showing only about 13 of 100 ninth-graders go on to graduate from college. They say this hurts the Tennessee economy in the long run.