More than half of community college students nationwide intend to pursue a four-year degree; however, in Texas only one in four community college students transfer to four-year institutions successfully. Among students who do transfer to a Texas four-year institution, roughly 60 percent go on to graduate with a bachelor's degree. The result is…

State policymakers and the public at large have a vested interest in the successful governance of their higher education institutions. The citizens who are appointed or elected to serve as board members of a state's colleges and universities oversee valuable public assets that they hold in trust for the state and for current and future…

Efforts to prevent or persuade increased emphasis on academic research at state colleges and regional universities demonstrate how emerging fields of higher education can be influenced through various policies and incentives. Utilizing the concept of strategic action fields (Fligstein & McAdam, 2012), this paper explains changes in…

Despite evidence suggesting that standardized tests are an imperfect measure of academic readiness, many community colleges across the country rely on them alone to determine student course placement. However, when the COVID-19 pandemic forced campuses to transition to remote operations in spring 2020, proctoring in-person placement tests became…

Texas State Technical College (TSTC) single mission is graduating students who can go on to attain higher-paying jobs. The state's funding formula was specifically designed to hold TSTC accountable to accomplish this mission. Texas statute stipulates that TSTC will offer "courses of study in technical-vocational education for which there is…

This article documents the emergence of a Mexican-American political consciousness in a Central Texas Community and the efforts to dismantle decades of inequitable, exclusionary educational policies and practices. We take readers into a community on the verge of profound change by exploring primary historical data and situating the voices of…