TSTC Waco’s First-Time, Full-Time Students

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first-time full-time students, Lamar Institute of Technology, Lamar State College - Orange, Lamar State College - Port Arthur, Lamars, TSTC Harlingen, TSTC Marshall, TSTC Waco, TSTC West Texas, TSTCs, Unduplicated Annual Student Headcount

As shown in an earlier post, TSTC Waco’s annual, unduplicated student headcount has dropped over 45% since FY 2009, and this blog is busily drilling down into the components of that drop to try and figure out what’s happening over there. Today, we’ll look at first-time, full-time enrollment and how that number has performed since 2009.  Click on the image below to enlarge a screen shot of a query I made at the Texas Higher Education Accountability website:

Lamars and TSTCs First-Time Full-Time Students Fall 2009-2013

Just looking at the numbers, it’s apparent almost everybody lost at least a little bit, but the Lamar Institute of Technology and Texas State Technical College Waco both lost a pretty big chunk going from 2009 to 2013. (Since LIT’s annual, unduplicated headcount AND its fall semester technical student count have remained fairly steady over time in comparison to TSTC Waco, I’m not going to give LIT’s big, first-time, full-time student drop much attention in this particular post.) Lamar state College-Port Arthur lost 3.9% of this demographic, Lamar State college-Orange dropped 8.5%, and TSTC Marshall lost 8.6% of its first-time, full-time students. The remaining colleges managed double-digits: LIT lost 43.5%, TSTC Waco 41.2%, and TSTC West Texas 24.4% from 2009 to 2013. On the other hand, TSTC Harlingen’s double-digits were in the POSITIVE range, with that fortunate, apparently well-managed college gaining–gaining–22% of this critical demographic.  Let’s see how it looks in a graph (click on the image to enlarge):

Lamars and TSTCs First-Time Full-Time Students Fall 2009-Fall 2013

This graph rather dramatically reveals TSTC Waco’s fall. The college went from having about twice the first-time, full-time students of any other college in its peer group in the fall of 2009 to plummeting downward to the tune of over 500 students and being surpassed in this category, albeit by just a handful of students, by TSTC Harlingen and its steadily rising first-time, full-time student numbers by the fall of 2013. Of course, TSTC Harlingen has that large contingent of academic students that TSTC Waco and the other TSTCs lack. Academic numbers aside, however, TSTC Harlingen’s technical student numbers have risen dramatically, as well, as visitors saw in Wednesday’s post. Harlingen is doing something right.

So let’s be clear here. The evidence already shows that TSTC Waco’s drop isn’t just about “unimportant” or “fringe” demographics like continuing education or high school dual credit. No sir. This is about TSTC Waco’s bread and butter: technical students and first-time, full-time students. Let us not forget that full-time students are the folks who, besides paying big tuition bucks for full class schedules, live in the dorms, eat in the cafeteria, spend big bucks in the bookstore, and generally spread money around the campus. Losing these students hurts and hurts badly.

Let’s hope that TSTC Waco is taking steps to correct this trend. Maybe Waco folks need to talk to Harlingen. Could that be why the Harlingen president’s former chief of staff has suddenly become a senior Waco official? [NOTE: This post originally stated incorrectly that Harlingen’s former chief of staff had become Waco’s VP for student learning. An article in the Waco Tribune-Herald stated he is a vice provost.] Waco needs new ideas, and I suspect this former Harlingen guy has a few.

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TSTC Waco’s Falling Enrollment

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drop, enrollment, enrollment drop, fall enrollment, fall semester, Lamar Institute of Technology, Lamar State College - Orange, Lamar State College - Port Arthur, Lamars, LIT, TSTC Harlingen, TSTC Marshall, TSTC Waco, TSTC West Texas

Yesterday, in a post titled “Tech Colleges’ Annual Unduplicated Student Headcount thru FY 2013,” I tripped across a rather startling discovery: TSTC Waco’s headcount had dropped over 45% since FY 2010.  Accordingly, it’s time to drill down and look at that drop a little more. Today, I’ll be examining technical student (as opposed to academic) enrollment across fall semesters. The following image is the result of an interactive query I made on the Texas Higher Education Accountability website:

Lamars and TSTCs Technical Students 2009-2013

Once again, the Lamars remained fairly steady over time. The Lamar Institute of Technology’s fall 2013 count reflects a drop of a couple of hundred students since fall 2009, but its 2013 count is still an uptick from fall 2012. All’s relatively well on the Lamar side of the fence.

For the most part, things aren’t so bad on the TSTC side of the fence, either. Marshall’s count has dropped significantly from FY 2009, but its FY 2013 count is an uptick from FY 2012, so it looks to me like it is recovering. Even the troubled TSTC college in West Texas has a count on the rise again. And Harlingen? It’s technical student count has jumped over 600 students since fall 2009 and almost 600 from fall 2012 to fall 2013 alone.  Again those are technical students, so Harlingen’s droves of academic students aren’t affecting this particular comparison. The bottom line is that 3 of the 4 TSTC colleges experienced increased fall semester enrollment in 2013.

Then there’s TSTC Waco. Its for-credit, technical student, fall semester count since FY 2009 has done nothing but drop, sometimes a little, sometimes a lot. Click on the image below to enlarge a chart based on the data obtained from the interactive query and image discussed above:

Chart Lamars and TSTCs Technical Student Fall Enrollment 2009-2013

As the chart above demonstrates, everybody had their ups and downs, but most aren’t horribly far from where they started in fall 2009, the period of this comparison. On the other hand, TSTC Harlingen and TSTC Waco really stand out here. TSTC Harlingen’s rising technical student line is heading upward toward TSTC Waco’s falling line. That’s not bad for a campus that once had less than half the technical students of Waco. (Is there a new TSTC flagship campus in the system’s future?) From fall 2009 to fall 2010 and fall 2010 to fall 2011, Waco lost a few students, but relatively few in comparison to the much larger losses going from fall 2011 to fall 2012 and fall 2012 to fall 2013. It will be interesting to see what fall 2014 numbers look like at Waco and if this disturbing trend continues. Taking a page out of the playbook at TSTC West Texas, Waco officials might or might not try to point at the new Returned Value Funding Model as the reason for these drops, but the other three TSTC colleges’ numbers, even West Texas’s, were on the rise in 2013, and they’re on the new funding model, too. Something else, I suspect, is afoot here.  I just don’t know what yet.

The analysis will continue.