Texarkana College to close two computer technology courses due to lack of demand, enrollment

TEXARKANA, Texas – The Texarkana College board of trustees approved the closure of two computer technology courses that have demonstrated low enrollment over the last 10 years in a meeting on Monday.

Vice President of Instruction Dr. Donna McDaniel gave the report to the board and recommended the closure of the Associate of Applied Arts degree with a concentration in Computer Programming and the Associate of Applied Arts degree with a concentration in Computer Networking due to a continued decline in enrollment over the years.

McDaniel said the courses had a combined enrollment of just nine students last semester.

“I know for at least the past seven years, we have looked at these two programs because the enrollment has just not been sustainable for the amount of courses and faculty that it holds,” McDaniel said. “We’ve done a lot of analyzing and evaluating to try to make it more appealing to attract more students.

“If you look at our workforce labor data, it doesn’t show that there’s a high job demand. It’s just not sustainable for the way we have the programs designed right now.”

McDaniel said there is a teach-out plan in place to allow students currently enrolled in the program to complete coursework to earn their credentials.

Effective in the fall 2022 semester, no new and/or transfer students will be allowed to enroll in the program. Students previously enrolled in the programs will be provided an opportunity to complete during the teach-out time frame to be completed by the spring semester of 2024.

In the future, TC may consider offering similar non-credit courses through its Community and Business Education division.

“It’s been a very tough decision, but we just felt like this was the decision that we needed to make now,” McDaniel said. “We want to take this next year to really examine and see if there are some micro-credentials, which are smaller programs that we can do through our Community & Business Education Center, and see if there are other ways we can meet the needs of our community.”

In other news from the meeting, 2022-2023 tuition and fee costs were approved.

There was an increase in tuition of $3 per semester credit hour for in-district students and $4 for out-of-district students.

“We work really hard to try to maintain an average tuition and fees, when compared to all the other 50 community colleges,” McDaniel said. “We really try to stay right there in the middle, but we did see that there was a need for a small increase.”