Most community colleges facing moderate growth rates

Those community colleges that are building new buildings are doing so with revenue bonds or by passing local bond issues for new bonds. The TACC president said that the state does not provide funding to community colleges for facilities - those expenditures are borne by local taxpayers. "The state only pays for instruction," he said, "and they only pay for half of that."

For FY 2005, Garcia said the state provided only 28 percent of Texas community college revenues, with local taxes making up 25 percent, tuition and fees contributing 32 percent and an additional 15 percent coming from other sources such as federal funding, grants and gifts and donations.

Nationwide, 40 percent of community college students use their own income to pay for their classes. Garcia said Texas campus figures would probably be higher than that "because we have very poor financial aid."

"We use everything we get, but the way the system is designed, the TEXAS Grant is our biggest source of financial aid and 90 percent of that goes to four-year institutions, even though community colleges serve 50 percent of the students."

However, Garcia said there is not enough financial aid in Texas for either two-year or four-year institutions. "The system is not designed to help us," he said. "We get a smaller piece of a pretty measly pie."

In spite of moderate growth, Texas still placed three community colleges among the nation's largest from fall 2005 to fall 2006, according to the most recent figures from the U.S. Department of Education. Houston Community College, with five campuses, was the nation's second largest community college with an enrollment of 38,493 full- and part-time students. Tarrant County Junior College ranked eighth with a student population of 25,273 and Austin Community College was ninth with a student enrollment of 25,209.

In the top 20 among the fastest growing community colleges in the country with student enrollment of less than 2,500 for the same time period were Ranger College (up 15.3 percent), Hill College (up 13 percent), Howard College (up 10.5 percent) and Temple College (up 9.8 percent).

Lee College joined Navarro among the top 10 fastest growing 5,000 to 9,999 student campuses in the country from fall 2005 to fall 2006, with an increase of 13 percent. And among community colleges with student populations of more than 10,000, South Texas College ranked third with an increase of 13.7 percent and Houston Community College was seventh with a 7.6 percent increase.