There is a comprehensive package of community college finance reforms making its way through the legislature that include additional financial aid for students in workforce education programs and dual credit students.
The budgets in the House and Senate include significant increases in funding for emergent research universities that don’t benefit from the Permanent University Fund, including Texas Tech, the University of Houston, University of North Texas and Texas State.
“There’s significant funding in the filed versions of the budget for healthcare workforce education programs, for example funding to support education of more mental health professionals, nurses and other health professionals and there is much more that’s been proposed just over the last several days,” Texas Commissioner of Higher Education Harrison Keller said in a phone interview Monday.
“There’s a lot of work to do over these next two and a half months as the legislature refines their policy priorities and budget priorities for higher education. This is one of the most important higher education legislative sessions that we’ve seen in a long time,” Keller added.
Keller said there have been some targeted investments in higher education over multiple sessions, but the community college finance system, for example, has remained relatively intact for decades without the legislature making any comprehensive changes.
“They’ve added some components to the system. They’ve put in some additional funding for financial aid over the last couple of decades, but what’s been proposed for this session is a much more comprehensive overhaul of community college finance so that would be historic change for our community colleges,” Keller said.
What’s been proposed on the emerging research university side is the creation of a new fund that would grow over time just to support institutions that don’t benefit from the Permanent University Fund to help them be more competitive on a national and global scale.
Currently only UT and Texas A&M benefit from the permanent university fund.
“UTPB benefits indirectly from the PUF. UTPB is not able to receive operating funds from the PUF. They only benefit from the PUF indirectly in the support they get through the UT System. … They do some important research out there. They benefit from system initiatives to support research across the campuses and also to promote affordability for students across the campuses that are part of the UT System. The way the PUF was established in the constitution, the primary beneficiary of PUF within the UT System is UT Austin, so there are some of the PUF funds that go for administration of the system and also to support systemwide initiatives,” Keller said.
Since this is a historic year for the state surplus, Keller said he has talked with legislative leadership — and they have talked amongst themselves — about what happens when the money runs out.
“The members are very conscious of the difference between strategic uses of one-time money and recurring obligations, so this is something they talk about a lot in these discussions about how much funding is required over time to support these initiatives. Are they taking on a recurring cost vs are they making a one-time allocation, so for example, around creating a new fund for emerging research universities the filed versions of the budget include a $2.5 billion one-time allocation to help establish a new fund, so that’s not a $2.5 billion recurring obligation. It’s that one-time allocation of funds to create a new endowment,” Keller said.
Enrollment, which was declining in the last couple of years is up slightly at public universities and independent colleges; “University enrollment is up at the health-related institutions; enrollment is up at the Texas state technical colleges. … I would say at most community colleges across the state enrollments are still down from their pre-pandemic levels. A lot of that is because enrollments at community colleges tend to track with what’s happening in the economy overall. When unemployment is lower, then enrollment tends to be lower at community colleges. Of course, we’re seeing historic levels of low unemployment. … A couple of notable exceptions are at Odessa College which in the fall their enrollments were up above their pre-pandemic levels substantially and at Midland College … I believe up above their pre-pandemic levels, but Odessa was certainly an outlier,” he said.
Adding more short-term programs to be more flexible has been a major driver in their ability to increase enrollment, Keller added.
“It’s easier for students to manage and it’s certainly easier for part-time students. (It’s) a direction that I hope more colleges and universities follow across the state,” Keller said.
A lot of the people that they want to re-enroll are adults, Texans who have jobs and families and complicated lives.
“Programs that might work well for traditional age students just don’t work very well for most adults, and so to have those more flexible schedules and programs is so important for ensuring we can expand opportunities for our communities across the state and also so we can realize the goals that we set out in Building a Talent Strong Texas,” Keller said.
On the subject of loans, Keller said he’s excited about a new student loan program called a FORWARD Loan.
“Within our loan programs this is a new opportunity that’s only available for certain high-demand fields. Students can receive a low-interest loan that they can’t use for more than two years, so if you’re in a four-year program you could use it for your last two years,” Keller said.
“If you’re in a shorter-term program, then you could be eligible for the whole program or even if you’re in a short-term workforce program, like a commercial drivers license program, those would be eligible as well. What it does is it provides a 3.35 percent interest rate student loan to help cover the cost of those programs. … The default repayment is an income based repayment. The way this works is as students repay those loans, it replenishes the part of the student loan program- that funds this type of loan. So essentially, the state will front you the money for high-demand fields at a very low interest rate — 3.35 percent and your repaying those loans gives someone else the opportunity so you can pay it forward,” Keller said.
The normal student loan interest rate is 5.35 percent, he said.
“As part of rolling out that new loan program and for our loan program in general, we want to emphasize that students shouldn’t borrow more money than a typical student could expect to be able to repay within 10 years given the typical earnings that are associated with that credential. We have put some limits on how much students are able to borrow from the FORWARD Loan (program) and we’ll do that more broadly across our student loan programs just to make sure that students aren’t borrowing more than they should given the kinds of credentials that they’re earning,” Keller said.
He added that the Texas Higher Education Coordinating Board is providing more information about that to counselors and advisors and they are putting new advising tools together.
“There’s a one-stop online advising portal called My Texas Future that we’re deploying this spring … You can see it now if you go to mytexasfuture.org. That’s where we’ll be curating information about jobs that are available; about what those typical salaries look like; about programs that are available through our colleges and universities. There will be more and more planning tools that we will deploy through My Texas Future. That’s also where we’ll connect students to ApplyTexas so they can connect to institutions. One of the distinctive features in My Texas Future is we’re working with the institutions so that students can ask questions directly of an advisor at different colleges and universities,” Keller said.
There is a chatbot where students can get routine questions answered and be connected with advisors at the institution so they can get some of those questions answered before they have that phone call or face-to-face conversation.
“The institutions are working with that so that folks can get connected. We want to make sure that people are able to explore the opportunities that are available through our institutions and have that clear line of sight to good jobs,” Keller said.
