Community Colleges

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The Importance of Dual Credit for Texas Community Colleges

One of the most prolific trends in the past 20 years has been the exponential growth of dual credit students who are earning college-level credits while still attending high school. The Texas Higher Education Coordinating Board (THECB) reported that more than 186,000 students were officially enrolled in dual credit courses across all institutions in Texas…

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Trends in Community College Enrollment

Recently, the National Student Clearinghouse’s (NSC) Research Center published its “Current Term Enrollment Estimates” for spring 2023. Across all higher education sectors, total enrollment nationally fell by 0.5% from spring 2022 to spring 2023. Public 4-year institutions saw a 0.8% decline in enrollments from spring 2022 to 2023, while public 2-year institutions saw a 0.5%…

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Measuring “Quality of Life”: Where Does Texas Rank?

In the past two blog posts, we have looked at data that have painted the state of Texas in a very good light in terms of overall rankings for top states for business and a quality workforce. One of the areas in which Texas has not fared well has been in the “Quality of Life”…

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Connection Between a Quality Workforce and A State’s Success

The connection between a quality workforce and the success of a state is unquestioned. In our previous blog post, we introduced America’s Top States for Business study from 2022. Throughout the 14 years of the CNBC study, Texas has had the best average ranking of 2.2 across all years in the data. However, in the last…

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Educational Attainment in Texas: Some College, No Degree

As a follow-up to our previous blog post looking at broad trends in educational attainment across the United States, we wanted to zoom into the state of Texas specifically to see how educational attainment levels have changed over time. Using the American Community Survey (ACS) data, the visualizations below show data from two perspectives: the counties within 50…

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Trends in Educational Attainment: Some College, No Degree

In our blog series on factors influencing enrollment in higher education, we now turn our lens to the current status of educational attainment in Texas and the United States. We will use data from the American Community Survey (ACS) that provides educational attainment estimates for adults (ages 25 and older) by seven categories ranging from…

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Population Trends in Texas: An Analysis of Age

Population Trends in Texas: An Analysis of Age In our previous blog post, we paused our series on factors affecting enrollment in higher education to look at preliminary enrollment numbers for fall 2022. The data show a slight recovery for public colleges (community colleges) after the loss of almost 100,000 students from fall 2019 to…

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University Comparisons of Completion Outcomes for Community College Transfers in Texas

University Comparisons of Completion Outcomes for Community College Transfers in Texas In our last blog post, we presented data from a recent report published by the Texas Higher Education Coordinating Board (THECB) that addressed gaps in graduation outcomes for transfer students when comparing them with native students. The data were presented as a comparison of public university…

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Completion Outcomes for Community College Transfers to Public Universities in Texas

Completion Outcomes for Community College Transfers to Public Universities in Texas If you have been following recent higher education-related news and headlines, you are likely aware that the trends in student transfers are alarming, especially in terms of community college to university transfers. Within Texas, the number of first-time transfer students enrolling at public universities…