Community Colleges in Texas Find Creative Ways Around Decreased Funding in Response to Low Enrollment

The Texas Higher Education Coordinating Board released its preliminary headcount for Texas schools in fall 2021, revealing an 11% loss of enrollment at Texas’s community colleges since 2019.

“Sadly, the pandemic has had a disparate impact on community colleges, and it’s hit everyone,” said Jacob Fraire, president of the Texas Association of Community Colleges (TACC). “When we look at reductions in enrollment, there’s no pattern between urban and rural. Everyone saw reductions.”

Jacob Fraire, TACC presidentTexas’s 50 community colleges were granted a type of reprieve from its state legislature, said Fraire. Normally a drop in enrollment across the state would impact the entirety of state funding. During the pandemic, the Texas legislature did not reduce overall funding.

However, the state distributes funding biennially, using a formula that does take enrollment into consideration. Schools that saw an enrollment reduction in fall 2020, the year funding was distributed, received less than their previous allocation of state funds. Twenty-one colleges were negatively impacted.

As the Coronavirus Aid, Relief, and Economic Security (CARES) Act and Higher Education Emergency Relief Fund (HEERF) timelines come to their close, the extra federal funding that may have cleared up short-term financial worries will disappear. During its 87th legislature held at the beginning of this year, the Texas government created the Commission on Community College Finance which will investigate the needs of community college funding across the state and make recommendations for the funding formula to be presented at the 88th legislature in December 2022. The commission meets for the first time next week. But until the committee has completed its recommendations, community college funding will continue to be based on COVID-era enrollment.

Dr. Thomas Brock, director of the Community College Research Center (CCRC) at the Teachers College at Columbia University, said that because community colleges across the U.S. are mostly funded based on enrollment, a sort of downward spiral could begin for institutions that are losing students.

“Fewer students mean cuts in services and programs, and we could see a bigger drop. That’s the worst-case scenario,” said Brock. “These enrollment struggles underscore the need for community colleges to make critical reforms to make sure students get support, structure, programs, classes, and advising they need.”