The state’s 50 community college districts, which are outperforming their initial expectations during their first two years under House Bill 8, will ask the 89th Texas Legislature for more money and a new way to track graduates to determine if the students get a return on their academic investment.
Leaders at El Paso Community College and the Texas Association of Community Colleges believe they have the support of legislators and expect to achieve their funding and policy goals during the next legislative session that runs from Jan. 14 through June 2.
The college districts, which were allotted $2.4 billion in the past biennium, want the legislature to include an additional $47 million in a supplemental appropriations bill to fund the programs’ additional accomplishments from its first two years. They also will request enough money to fully fund the next biennium. The amount will not be known until late January or early February after the Texas Higher Education Coordinating Board shares its projections based on data from the 50 college districts.
Additionally, they want the state to develop a tracking system that will provide data the community colleges can use to show what their graduates do, where they do it geographically and how much they earn. This would add to the significant data collected by the Texas Education Agency, the Texas Higher Education Coordinating Board and the Texas Workforce Commission.
“We want to see the economic mobility. We want to be able to look at data that shows that we’re doing our job,” said Ray Martinez, TACC president and CEO. “We’re slowly getting there.”
Measuring community colleges’ success
The landmark House Bill 8, which passed unanimously in 2023, changed the focus of community college funding from enrollment numbers to student outcomes. The aim is to prepare those graduates for additional education or for professions that offer job security, competitive wages and opportunities for promotion.
Through this new formula, college districts are judged on their number of graduates with degrees or credentials of value, academic transfers to four-year universities, completion of dual-credit courses, remedial courses for students who were not college-ready, adult learners who are upskilled or reskilled, and their efforts to collaborate with industry partners.
The incentives of House Bill 8 align with the state’s “Building a Talent Strong Texas.” Those goals include college credentials for working-age Texans because up to 70% of new jobs by 2031 will need a post-secondary education.
Martinez said that wage data must be factored into the THECB’s definition of credentials of value. He said that information is important and should be available to anyone ready to invest their time and money into a short-term credential or a two-year or four-year degree.
“All of that is relevant,” Martinez said. “I think we do a much better job today of being able to put that information forward and making it … transparent, but there’s more we can be doing.”
About 25% of the state’s community college students pursue a career and technical training path to earn a credential and enter the workforce. The rest plan to transfer to a four-year institution. About 85% of EPCC graduates transfer to the University of Texas at El Paso.
Preparing students, adapting programs
EPCC President William Serrata said that an enhanced tracking system will enable colleges to follow the progress of those who earn credits or degrees and then transfer, earn their bachelor’s degrees and find a job.
“That’s what we’re looking for,” Serrata said.
The EPCC leader said that if the legislature agrees, colleges will have a better grasp of how their programs prepare graduates in different fields in the next four years. Some careers are easier to track than others. One of the tougher degree plans to follow is multidisciplinary studies, a personalized program that involves courses from multiple academic disciplines.
“Multidisciplinary students need a longer gestation time because you cannot accurately measure wages until after they earn their undergraduate degree,” Serrata said.
At this point, the state relies on unemployment insurance wage records, but that data does not include where the graduates worked, their duties or their salaries. As an example, current data could show a graduate works for H-E-B, a large supermarket chain in East, Central and South Texas. The data would show that the graduate works in San Antonio, the chain’s headquarters, regardless of the person’s actual job site. It also would not differentiate whether the employee served as a cashier, accountant, pharmacist or any other job.
David Troutman, THECB deputy commissioner for academic affairs, said that Texas has begun to fall behind other states on data collection in the areas of job titles and job locations. If he had his way, the state also would be able to collect which companies offer health benefits and employer-sponsored retirement plans.
He suggested a pilot program with about 10 of the state’s largest corporations to test the methods and necessary technology to ensure the data is complete, secure and accurate, and then scale up. He said that if there is cooperation, it could get done in a year or two. Regardless of the effort involved, he said the state needs to fill the job information gaps.
“We’re in 2025,” he said in a phone interview. “It shouldn’t be this difficult.”
Filling the gaps
The Texas Legislature passed House Bill 1703, authored by District 79 Rep. Claudia Ordaz of El Paso, during its last session. Its goal was to update the state’s Workforce Development Evaluation System to create a more capable labor force.
Alma Aranda, director of innovation and development with Workforce Solutions Borderplex, said HB 1703 is a valuable early step toward understanding workforce needs. The goals of the five-year pilot program study are to determine the available data and the gaps that need to be filled to provide better services and outcomes across TEA, TWC and the THECB.
The WSB is a nonprofit certified by the Texas Workforce Commission as a local workforce development board for six counties.
“While (HB 1703) may offer insights into data gaps, (EPCC’s) current needs are more immediate and specific,” she wrote in an email response. “The data from HB 1703 could be valuable down the road. EPCC is a valuable partner, and WSB is ready to support as needed.”
Grace Atkins, a policy adviser for workforce and postsecondary education at Texas 2036, said her group will advocate for the enhanced tracking system to maximize the legislation’s potential, and any other initiatives that will help the colleges build on their HB 8 successes.
Atkins said that Texas 2036, a nonprofit, nonpartisan public policy research and advocacy organization, will provide the 32 new legislators background on HB 8 to familiarize them with its goals.
Atkins said the decision by the previous legislature to revamp the community college funding model for the first time in almost 50 years showed a lot of confidence. Legislators infused a lot of money into the districts – an additional $684 million – and it will be important to continue that level of funding.
“This is a really critical year,” Atkins said from her Austin office during a recent Zoom interview. “It’s important to continue that support going forward. It wasn’t just a one-time thing and we’re done.”
One other policy issue community college administrators want the legislature to fix is a minor – but significant – tweak. The original plan stated that community colleges would earn money if students with at least 15 credit hours transferred to one of the state’s public four-year universities. What is not funded currently is when that same student transfers to a nonprofit private university.
The post Texas community colleges push Legislature for additional funds, job tracking system appeared first on El Paso Matters.
Read: Read More