economy

Texas Community Colleges:Alamo Region

Public community colleges serve a vital role in our state’s economy by training our workforce and preparing students for further academic study. Created specifically to expand access to higher education, they’re also notable for filling the specific educational and vocational needs of their service areas.

Regional Overview

The Texas Comptroller of Public Accounts divides the state into 12 economic regions. The Alamo economic region — 19 counties covering about 18,000 square miles in south central Texas — has two community college districts: Alamo Colleges District and Victoria College. The region is home to almost 2.8 million people, about 10 percent of the state’s population.

Regional Economic Impact

In 2020, the Comptroller’s office requested financial data from Texas’ 50 community college districts and conducted statewide and regional studies of their economic impact. Our analysis predated the COVID-19 crisis and the economic impacts that followed. The Alamo region’s two community college districts reported revenues of more than $531.9 million in fiscal 2018, which produced an additional $284.3 million in indirect and induced economic activity for a total impact of $816.2 million annually. More than 7,000 jobs are supported by the region’s community college spending. Under normal economic conditions, every dollar spent by community colleges produces an additional 53 cents of economic activity, while every dollar spent on compensation produces an additional 25 cents of total income to the state economy (Exhibit 1).

Output refers to the intermediate and final economic values of goods and services. Induced impact refers to the jobs, sales/output and compensation created when new employees spend their wages at local establishments. Figures may not sum due to rounding.

Sources: JobsEQ, Texas Comptroller of Public Accounts, Texas Higher Education Coordinating Board and Texas community colleges

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Our model represents a conservative estimate. Other studies, including one conducted by this agency in 2008 and another by Emsi in 2015, have applied a broader view of the economic ripple effects of a community college education and found considerably greater impact.

Employment and Wages

In general, the region’s restaurant industry, health care and other personal care professions and construction have seen the highest job growth in the last five years. The Alamo Region continues to see an increase in demand for oil and gas extraction workers despite the recent downturn in those industries. Between 2014 and 2019, the region’s food preparation industry added nearly 11,000 jobs in the region, while its health care and social assistance industries added almost 10,000 jobs.

The region’s most significant occupations are shown in Exhibits 2 and 3, by both location quotient (which measures an industry’s proportionate concentration in a region versus its concentration in the U.S. as a whole) and by numeric growth during the last five years.

Figures may not sum due to rounding. Data are as of Q3 2019 except for wage data, which represent covered employment in 2018.

Source: JobsEQ

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Figures may not sum due to rounding. Data are as of Q3 2019 except wage data, which are for covered employment in 2018.

Source: JobsEQ

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Wages by Educational Attainment

Community colleges deliver a particularly good return on investments of time and tuition. In the Alamo region, workers with some college or associate degrees and with stable jobs — defined as those employed with the same firm throughout a calendar quarter — earn an average of $5,033 more annually than high school graduates (Exhibit 4).

Sources: U.S. Census Bureau and JobsEQ

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The increase in wages alone for those workers adds an additional $1.5 billion in direct compensation to the state economy each year (Exhibit 5) — almost three times the total spending of the region’s community colleges.

Exhibit 5

The wage effect is particularly noteworthy given an average annual tuition for the region’s community colleges of just $2,775 per year and the modest two-year educational commitment required for an associate degree.¹ The highest-paying jobs for associate-degree holders in Texas are in the energy/utility, management, professional services, trade and manufacturing sectors.²

More Degrees Needed

While the region’s new graduates and certificate holders enter the workforce in large numbers, demand for some degrees still outpaces supply. Broadly speaking, these award gaps are largely in agriculture, health professions and business administration.

Community college districts in the Alamo region awarded more than 5,000 certificates and associate degrees in the health professions in the 2017-18 school year; the next most-common award areas were general studies and liberal arts, personal and culinary services and other trades (Exhibit 6).

Source: JobsEQ

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Alamo Community College Overview

The Alamo region’s two community college districts provided technical and academic coursework for more than 56,000 students in the 2017-18 school year (Exhibit 7). 

*The percentage of academic or technical graduates employed in the fourth quarter of the calendar year after graduation and/or enrolled in a Texas two- or four-year institution in the following fall after graduation, as specified.

Source: Texas Higher Education Coordinating Board

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Alamo Colleges District

• The Alamo Colleges District (ACD) comprises five individual colleges: Northeast Lakeview College, Northwest Vista College, Palo Alto College, San Antonio College and St. Philip’s College.
• ACD received the 2018 Malcolm Baldridge National Quality Award, the most prestigious honor a higher education institution can achieve for performance excellence in innovation, efficiency and leadership.³
• St. Philip’s is the only college federally designated as both a historically black college and a Hispanic-serving institute.⁴
• In fiscal 2017, ACD added $2.6 billion in income to the ACD service region’s economy, equal to about 2.0 percent of the region’s gross product.⁵
• An analysis of data from fiscal 2017 indicates that the average ACD associate degree graduate will see an increase in earnings of $9,400 each year compared to a high school graduate working in Texas.⁶
• ACD’s Alamo Academies programs train high school students for careers in high-demand sectors; 93 percent of students who graduate from the Alamo Academies programs pursue higher education, join the armed forces or enter high-wage employment following graduation.⁷

Victoria College

• Victoria College serves Victoria, Calhoun, DeWitt, Gonzales, Jackson, Lavaca and Refugio counties.
• The student-to-teacher ratio at Victoria College is 17 to 1.⁸
• According to a 2014 Emsi study, Victoria College added $164.6 million to the college’s service area.⁹

Conclusion

Community colleges play a vital role for students and businesses by offering postsecondary education and job training at great value. As the Alamo region’s two community college districts work to address local skills gaps and meet the specific needs of area employers, they support more than 7,000 jobs and add more than $816 million dollars in economic output annually. Furthermore, the higher pay of those with some college or an associate degree helps raise total wages in the region by $1.5 billion per year.

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Questions?

If you have any questions or concerns regarding the material on this page, please contact the Comptroller’s Data Analysis and Transparency Division.