PJC honored by Texas Association of Business

Published or Revised October 25, 2011

The Texas Association of Business is honoring four community colleges for making a difference for their students. These colleges not only raised the level of student achievement, they took steps to ensure that more students stuck with their education and earned a degree or certificate. "We hear a lot about the colleges that aren't pushing students to succeed, pushing them to get a degree," said Texas Association of Business President and CEO Bill Hammond. "These are four community colleges that are getting it right. Each has shown significant improvement in the number of students completing degree plans and improvements in student achievement." In the small community college category, the Howard County Community College District has made great strides in the area of transfers and helping students complete more credit hours, which have led to more certificate and degree completions. In the medium community college category, TAB honors Paris Junior College. From 2007 to 2010, it made significant progress in helping more students not only complete developmental coursework in math, but also helped students successfully complete the first college level math course. The honoree in the large community college category is Blinn College. Blinn has steadily increased the number of transfer students as well as student credit accumulation toward a degree or certificate over the last few years. In the very large community college category the TAB honors South Texas College. It has experienced a significant increase in the number of degrees and certificates awarded to students. TAB asked The Higher Education Coordinating Board to use itsoutcome-based model, called Momentum Points, to measure the relative improvement of all community colleges on metrics such as developmental education completion, transfers, credit accumulation and certificate and degree completion between FY 2007 and FY 2010. These are areas TAB believes are critical for producing better results. "To be competitive and be ready for the jobs of the 21st century Texas must be ready to train the next generation of workers, that's why our community colleges are so valuable," said Hammond. "These are the examples. These colleges show that change can be made, and outcomes for both students and employers can be improved." Founded in 1922, the Texas Association of Business is a broad-based, bipartisan organization representing more than 3,000 small and large Texas employers and 200 local chambers of commerce.