Program seeks to boost college enrollment

Clarendon College joined other Texas colleges, universities, and state leaders this month in launching an unprecedented statewide campaign, called College for Texans, to encourage hundreds of thousands of additional people in Texas to pursue higher education over the next decade and more.

CC President Myles Shelton said the campaign has four major goals: Participation, Success, Research, and Excellence. The later two are goals for major universities, but the first two are goals for all colleges and universities in the state.

“If you look at the demographics in Texas between now and 2015, you see a growing population which will participate at the same or lower percentage in higher education,” Shelton said. “Texas is already lower than California, New York, and Florida in terms of the percentage of our population enrolled in college.”

The campaign to increase college enrollment statewide was authorized by the Texas Legislature last year and is directed by the Texas Higher Education Coordinating Board.

“Although more people than ever are enrolled in Texas colleges and universities, the increases haven’t kept pace with the state’s population growth, leaving Texas on a path to becoming a less educated, less prosperous state,” said Commissioner of Higher Education Don Brown. “We must close the gaps in student participation and success for all of the state’s people, especially for low-income groups and people in regions of the state with low college-going rates.”

As higher education participation rates and educational attainment decline, average annual household income is projected to fall by an estimated $30 billion to $40 billion statewide by 2030 – with dire effects for Texas families and the state’s economy, according to demographers.

Shelton says the future of the Texas economy is linked to citizens receiving college training and job skills.

“If we don’t increase participation in higher education, then we won’t have a trained workforce, and there is a direct economic impact with not having a trained workforce,” he said. “Those jobs will go somewhere else.”

Only 23.3 percent of the population which is age 25 and older in Donley County has earned a college degree, according to the 2000 US Census. Another 28.5 percent have some college but no degree.

Shelton said surveys show that every dollar invested in a community college education returns $9 in higher future earnings for the individual. Every dollar invested by state and local governments in education returns $18 statewide.

A survey commissioned by the Texas Association of Community Colleges concluded that a better educated Texas could save $276.3 million in improved health and in reduced welfare roles, lower unemployment, and less crime.

Gov. Rick Perry says getting a higher education is also tied to having more opportunities in the future.

“An educated Texan inherits a world of unlimited opportunity, and higher education is critical to achieving higher aspirations,” said Perry. “This campaign will help empower more young Texans to live their dreams by teaching them how to prepare academically and financially for college.”

College for Texans will motivate primary and secondary students to prepare and aim for college and ensure that colleges reach out to embrace those students. The campaign will inspire parents, teachers, and communities to support each child’s aspirations to prepare and enroll in post-secondary education.

“It starts in the public schools with making the college preparatory program the standard program and recruiting and retaining qualified teachers,” Shelton said.

College for Texans is designed to give all people, especially families without any higher education experience, information about the value of higher education, the preparation needed to participate and succeed in college, and ways to find financial aid or otherwise pay for college. The campaign is aimed at helping bring 300,000 additional academically prepared people – beyond the 200,000 additional students expected to enroll based on current trends – into higher education by 2015.

“I think the College for Texans plan is necessary for Texas and will benefit Clarendon College,” Shelton said. “It’s necessary for us to have an educated workforce. We’ve got to communicate to current and future students that success in the future is going to be based on further training beyond just a high school diploma.”