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Governance
Texas has an institutional governing structure: there are 61 separate governing boards—
6 boards for the public four-year system, 50 locally elected boards for the public
community college districts, 1 board overseeing the 8 technical colleges, and 4 single-
institution boards. The Texas Higher Education Coordinating Board is responsible for
overall state postsecondary planning, data collection, and policy analysis; it also has
funding advisory responsibilities to the governor and the legislature. The oldest need-
based grant program is the $62 million (in 2000) Tuition Equalization Grant program,
which is restricted to students in independent colleges and universities. An ambitious new
need- and merit-based grant program, the TEXAS (Toward Excellence, Access and
Success) program, provides needy students who complete the high school college
completion curriculum with awards equal to their tuition and fees. Now in its third year,
the TEXAS program has an annual appropriation of $120 million. A portion of the
program (TEXAS-II) is targeted to community college students who have not completed
the high school curriculum; this portion of the program is funded at $5 million.
Enrollment Planning
Transfer has long been emphasized as one of the missions of the Texas community
colleges, although the emphasis on transfer relative to other functions differs among the
colleges, depending on local needs and economic conditions. The state has hesitated to
make baccalaureate transfer and degree attainment a specific goal for community college
students, because policymakers believe that many students do not want or need to obtain
a degree. Some of Texas’ four-year institutions were once upper-division campuses,
designed to build on a 2+2 pattern with the local community college.
Academic Policies Affecting Transfer
For many years, Texas colleges were encouraged to develop voluntary articulation
agreements between the two- and four-year institutions. In 1987, however, the state
legislature and the Coordinating Board, hoping to strengthen articulation and transfer,
mandated the development of a statewide core curriculum. Legislation in 1997 expanded
that concept, and Texas now has a transfer general education core curriculum that allows
individual institutions some flexibility in designating core courses. The Coordinating
Board reviews and approves each institution’s core curriculum every five years. If a
student completes an approved core curriculum, the receiving institution must accept
those courses as a substitute for its own core requirements. Receiving institutions and
specific majors may require some additional courses beyond the minimum core.
Under statutory directive, the Coordinating Board has also developed “field of study”
curricula to facilitate transfer of courses within high-demand disciplines; such agreements
are now in place for 38 disciplines and majors. There are no statewide requirements or
policies for joint admission or guaranteed transfer, but these are encouraged, and several
institutions have created such policies. Many institutions—including every public college
and university as well as many private colleges—have also adopted the common course
numbering system for lower-division courses. Institutions that choose not to use the
common course numbers are required to publish a “cross-walk” between the common
numbering system and their own. Most four-year institutions have electronic degree-audit
systems, and the state is considering developing a statewide electronic degree-audit
system, which would allow students to see how courses would transfer to different
institutions.
There is no uniform high school graduation requirement in Texas, although the
legislature has specified that the college completion curriculum will be the “default”
curriculum for all public schools by 2005. After public institutions were prohibited from
using affirmative action admissions policies, the state legislature enacted a law that
requires public universities to admit the top 10% of all high school graduates. A range of
other admissions criteria are applied to students not in the top 10%, with individual
institutions setting these requirements.
Students entering college with low SAT or ACT scores or without these scores are
required to take the TASP (Texas Academic Skills Program) examination and may not
enroll in more than nine semester credit hours before taking the test. Students who do not
pass the TASP are placed in remedial and developmental courses, either at a four-year
institution or a community college. Some four-year institutions contract with their local
community colleges to provide remedial instruction.
Data Collection and Accountability
Texas has a good statewide information system and data analysis capacity. Detailed
reports track student retention, progress, and graduation for all public institutions as well
as all types of transfer activity between all types of schools. Texas also monitors the
transfer and subsequent performance of first-time freshmen who enroll for 12 or more
semester credit hours before transferring to a four-year institution. The state does not
calculate a statewide transfer rate. About 29% of first-time community college students
transfer to or graduate from a public four-year institution after six years. Of the students
who took 12 semester credit hours or more, 11% had obtained the baccalaureate degree
after six years, and another 18% had transferred to a four-year institution but had not yet
completed the baccalaureate degree.
In 2001 Texas completed a major study of the effectiveness of its statewide transfer
policies. The study was conducted by a statewide task force that reviewed thousands of
student transcripts to learn about course-taking and transfer patterns. The study found no
significant difference in the quality of student performance at the receiving institutions
(as measured by grade-point averages) between native students and those who transferred
after completing at least 30 semester credit hours. The majority of community college
credits were accepted by the receiving four-year institutions: 80% of total semester credit
hours were accepted for transfer, of which 70% were applied to the baccalaureate degree
major. Transfer credit was denied primarily for low grades and for remedial and
developmental courses. The task force’s recommendations for strengthening transfer
included improvements in reporting student performance information from receiving to
sending institutions; a feasibility study for a statewide electronic degree-audit system,
similar to the one in Florida; and study of “best practices” in other states.
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Demand for higher education is increasing at an annual rate of around 1.5%, with slightly
higher growth in the community colleges and technical institutions. The state has also
placed priorities on raising the college-going rate to the national average and on
eliminating disparities in attendance between racial groups. One goal of Texas’ new
higher education plan (Closing the Gaps) is to increase college enrollments by 500,000
by 2015. A second goal is to increase the total number of certificates and associate and
baccalaureate degrees by 50% (from 95,000 awarded in 2000 to 163,000 in 2015). The
state has no firm enrollment targets for the different institutions, but progress toward
these goals will inevitably increase the enrollment demand on community colleges. There
has been considerable concern about Texas’ low retention and baccalaureate achievement
rates, and the state has been analyzing student flow patterns within public higher
education for many years.
