The Tennessee Board of Regents as currently constituted is authorized by an act of the Tennessee General Assembly passed in 1972. It supervises all public institutions of higher education in Tennessee not governed by the University of Tennessee system, including four-year institutions, community colleges, and the Tennessee Technology Centers (formerly called "technical institutes" and "State-Area Vo-Tech Schools").

According to its own figures, the TBR system is the seventh-largest system of public higher education currently operating in the United States. It is currently comprises six universities, the largest of which are Middle Tennessee State University in Murfreesboro and the University of Memphis and also includes Tennessee Technological University, East Tennessee State University, Austin Peay State University, and Tennessee State University . Additionally, there are currently 13 community colleges and 26 technology centers. Unlike the situation in most states, these component institutions do not have their own board of directors, board of trustees or similar bodies at the campus level; the TBR essentially serving in this function for all of them, hiring their presidents and approving the promotions of senior faculty and staff. This centralized system has frequently come under serious criticism and there are frequent proposals to replace the TBR with a system under which each component school, or at least each of the universities, would have its own independent board; thus far no such proposal has been enacted. In part this would seem to be due to the current composition of the board. The governor of Tennessee, in addition to appointing the Regents, serves ex officio as their chairman. Also the commissioners of education and agriculture, who are gubernatorial appointees, serve as ex officio members as well; to date since the enactment of this system, no governor has been willing to give up the degree of control over higher education in Tennessee granted by this setup.

The professional head of the TBR system is referred to as its "Chancellor". a title granted by many systems (including the University of Tennessee system) to the head of a campus. Many TBR members are major contributors to the systems' component schools; most are additionally active and identifiable political supporters of the governor who appointed them or are granted membership by another office held by them. Additionally, a student from one of the component schools serves a one-year term as a Regent, as does one faculty member from one of the schools.

The competition for limited state dollars between members of the Regents system and the University of Tennessee system is an annual event before the General Assembly; to mitigate this somewhat there also exists the Tennessee Higher Education Commission, which serves, among other functions, to coordinate the activities and goals of the two systems to a degree. This body has representatives from both systems; unsurprisingly this three-pronged approach to higher education management in the state is frequently widely criticized, but appears too politically entrenched to seem likely to be changed at the current time. As of the close of the 2006 session of the General Assembly no legislation altering this system had advanced out of the committee system.