History

The Texas Legislature enacted the first statutory recognition of junior colleges, Article 2815-H, in 1929. Most junior colleges of this period were under the governance of the local public school districts' board. The chief administrative officer was often referred to as "dean," with the superintendent acting as the ex-officio president.

Before 1949, public junior colleges operated independently with no state oversight. During that year, the 51st Legislature created the Texas Legislative Council to study the situation. As a result of their report, state-level administration as assigned to the State Board of Education and the Texas Education Agency. For the next nine years, committees from the colleges worked the Agency to establish accreditation standards, criteria for the establishment of new college districts, uniform reporting systems, appropriation formulas and instructional standards. However, most of the attention was focused on K-12 public schools. Junior colleges, rapidly seeking independence from public school boards, drew their practices and policies from other institutions of higher education.

Prior to the creation of the Legislative budget board in the 1950's, college presidents, acting through the Texas Association of Community Colleges, would draft a funding bill, recruit sponsors in both houses as well as support for the bill. A lump sum was appropriated for all community colleges and distributed according to Fall semester enrollment, resulting in unpredictable and unstable funding.

In 1965, community colleges (the term adopted nationally to reflect two-year colleges comprehensiveness) were place under the control of the Texas Higher Education Coordinating Board; however, the SBE and TEA oversaw technical and vocational programs for several more users. In 1975, the 64th Legislature authorized the SBE to contract with the Coordinating Board to supervise these programs. The administration of post-secondary vocational-technical education was officially transferred to the Coordinating Board in 1985 by the 69th Legislature with Senate Bill 911, thereby consolidating state level administration of all community college formula funded programs.

The creation of the Legislative Budget Board and adoption of then 'Package Appropriations Bill" led to major changes in securing appropriations. The adopted procedure provided a line item appropriation for each college based on the number of instructional hours generated during a specific time period or the "base year." Between 1971 and 1973, TACC, the Coordinating Board and the Legislative Budget Office worked to establish a funding formula based on two concepts: 1. Instructional hours generated by faculty/student contact - Contact Hours and 2. a biennial cost study (now the All Funds Expenditure Report) for providing instruction in each program area during each base period. The Contact hour Formula was adopted by the legislature in 1973. Although minor revisions have been made, this approach remains in effect today.

In 1995 the Legislature created designated service areas for each of the state's community college districts in order to ensure that all parts of the state would have access to community college services.

In 1941, total legislative appropriations for all junior colleges in Texas amounted to $325,000 or $50 per student for 6500 full-time student equivalents. During 1985-1994, appropriations grew less than 12% while enrollment growth exceeded 31 percent. The FY2000-01 state appropriation was 1.4 billion.