Odessa College celebrated strides it has made in enrollment, number of certificates and degrees awarded and other milestones during a news conference Wednesday in the Community Room of the Wood Health Sciences Building.
Their accomplishments were in the accountability report that the state of Texas publishes every year. According to the Texas Association of Community Colleges website, House Bill 8 passed in 2023, established a funding model based on performance tied to specific student outcomes.
A shorter version of the report was presented at the August board meeting and a video of what’s in store for Vision 2030-Plus was shown at the end of the news conference.
This replaces a funding model based on the number of courses and credit hours, the site said.
“Instead of competing against one another for state dollars, each community college is now challenging itself to earn additional funding by educating more students and awarding credentials of value that align with Texas’s workforce needs today and tomorrow,” the site detailed.
The accountability report was developed to help the state to measure institutions and their effectiveness in meeting the state’s strategic goals for higher education.
“Today’s report comes from the 2023 report that was published last year (and) focuses on data metrics that have been used to support the performance-based funding that the state now uses for House Bill 8,” Odessa College Chief of Staff Robert Rivas said.
The data in the report is from before 2023, so for example, OC has not yet reported its graduation numbers for 2023-24. Those will show up in the 2025 accountability report, Rivas said.
“To give a sense of scale, the 2023 accountability report showed about 1,900 students receiving credentials here at Odessa College. Last year, over 2,500 students received credentials, so we’re growing like crazy. The numbers that you’ll see for enrollment in the next accountability report will be greater. I anticipate from the last accountability report that showed about 8,600, students enrolled in the fall semester, we will have probably 1,000 more students, if not more, enrolled in the fall semester this fall,” Rivas said.
Rivas said he thinks part of OC’s success comes from the work their faculty does in the classroom.
“Over 10 years ago, our faculty adopted the Drop Rate Improvement Program, which focuses on creating relationships with students and keeping them in class,” Rivas said. “That has translated to more students completing; that has translated to more students succeeding; that has translated to more students completing degrees and certificates.
“I think that really the relationships matter; the focus on every single student matters, and the focus on attracting students in different ways. We know that students have a lot of opportunity here in the Permian Basin. The lure of the workforce is great, the money to be made is great. Often it’s easy to think that going to college isn’t necessary.
“And I think we have been very intentional about outreaching to students in any way that we can to get them to try college and to stay with college,” Rivas added.
OC reported 4,275 students enrolled in dual credit. These are high school students enrolled in college classes. This is an 8.9 percent increase from 2021. The state average was 3 percent.
“We are going into high schools; we are going into middle schools; we are going into elementary schools. We’re doing everything we can to convince the people in our community, that college can be free, college can be accessible, and college can be for them,” Rivas said.
In the past, when unemployment is low, community college enrollment increases and when more people are working, enrollment decreases. At the same time, people still have a hard time affording college.
“It’s an interesting dynamic. Traditionally, the model would tell you when unemployment is high, college enrollments go up and when unemployment is low, college enrollments go down. That’s what you’ll see across the country, and in the history of our college that’s something you would have seen years before.
“I think that has shifted. Something has shifted at Odessa College where you can put those lines together and say, what does unemployment look like versus enrollment? Even though unemployment is so low in the Permian Basin right now, enrollment is at the highest it’s ever been at Odessa College. I think it comes from us really focusing on how do we make college accessible and affordable for our students? You see the amount of students receiving Pell Grants. You see the Wrangler Promise program that we implemented this fall where we committed to covering the cost of college for the class of 2024 that enrolled this semester. We are looking at every possible way we can to help students afford college,” Rivas said.
The Drop Rate Improvement Program is built on the idea of making individual connections with students.
“Students want to be seen; students want to be heard; students want to be addressed by their name. All of us want that, and the Drop Rate Improvement Program creates a platform for our faculty to support our students and connect with our students in that way.
“We saw immediately when we implemented the Drop Rate Improvement Program back in 2011 that our drop rates just plummeted. They went from being over 10% to being single digits in one semester. Every single faculty that has tried the Drop Rate Improvement Program has seen improvements in the course completion rates, meaning the students who make it to the end of the class. At this point, less than 3% of students that start classes at Odessa College drop the classes, and over 85% of the students that take classes at Odessa College are getting a C or better.
“We know that that comes from the work that we started with the Drop Rate Improvement Program, that if we show our students we care, if we show our students they’re important, if we show our students flexibility, because we know life happens, our students are going to be more successful because they’re going to feel that support. That’s something that has become pervasive at Odessa College. There is not a classroom on this campus that has a faculty member that is not using the commitments of the Drop Rate Improvement Program. It is part of the fabric of who we are as an institution,” Rivas said.
Although there is low unemployment in the Permian Basin, people return to school because they want a better job or they want to train for a different field or profession. For instance, if someone was working in the oilfield, but decided to go into nursing instead that would be reskilling.
People who come back to school to upskill may have a job, but want to improve their position.
“I think one of the great things that the state of Texas has done with the new strategic plan that came out in 2022 called Building a Talent Strong Texas, is focusing on preparing citizens of Texas with credentials of value — value, meaning credentials that are going to get them jobs, that provide family-sustaining wages. I think that as we moved through the pandemic, we saw a lot of people looking to community colleges, Odessa College included, to reskill or upskill, to create more training opportunities and more learning opportunities that translate into more work opportunities for them. At Odessa College, we have so many different ways for students to achieve those credentials of value. In just five weeks, you can go through our professional truck driver program and get a CDL license. We know that in the Permian Basin, a CDL is a very valuable credential. So even though we see low unemployment, we’re seeing people come for not just the short-term credentials and training, but the long-term credentials so they can create more earning opportunities for them and their families in the future,” Rivas said.
