Texas colleges seeing a leap in enrollment
Increase in students, aging of faculty mean more openings for professors
07/28/2002

By ANURADHA RAGHUNATHAN / The Dallas Morning News

Student enrollment at public universities and community colleges is growing rapidly. Texas' higher education institutions are looking to add at least 200,000 students by 2015. The number may be as high as 500,000 if an initiative by the Texas Higher Education Coordinating Board for increasing student enrollment is successful. Observers say this is good news for educators. Increased student populations and other factors are sure to open up an abundance of full-time and part-time faculty positions in the next few years. The Coordinating Board, created by the Texas Legislature, launched a program called Closing the Gaps" in October 2000 that is aimed at boosting the number of minorities who attend college. Only 5 percent of Texas' population is enrolled in higher education – below the national average of 5.4 percent. The state coordinating board seeks to increase the participation rate to 5.7 percent by 2015, or enrolling 500,000 more students. "If you want to have more students in higher education, you need to have additional ways to teach them," said Ray Grasshoff, spokesman for the coordinating board. "We are going to need more professors and assistant professors." According to a recent study by a member of the Texas Association of College Teachers, the state might need nearly 20,000 more full-time and part-time faculty by 2015. Local college administrators attest to this demand for faculty. In the Dallas County Community College District, student enrollment at the various campuses has grown at a steady clip. It went from 50,000 in 2000 to 55,000 in 2001. Enrollment this fall is expected to be 60,000. "Generally, when the economy is not very good, we tend to see students coming back to school," said Roberto Aguero, vice chancellor of education affairs at the Dallas County Community College District. Just this year, the district added 25 faculty members to meet the demands of higher enrollment. But Mr. Aguero adds that apart from the short-term spike,there is an ongoing demand, particularly for math, English and history teachers. At the University of Texas at Arlington, student enrollment leapt from 19,148 in 1998 to 21,180 in 2001. The faculty population kept pace, growing from 799 in 1999 to 826 in 2001.

Educators say that job growth in colleges in the next few years will be influenced by another factor: the aging faculty population. According to statistics from the coordinating board, nearly 48 percent of faculty members at the state universities are older than 50. If all of them retired by 2015, there would be 7,000 new positions, according to Frank Fair, state treasurer of Texas' Association of College Teachers. He has done a study on faculty demand in Texas and warns that if the state does not groom faculty members now, it will run into a serious shortfall. "Somebody better be doing some long-range planning," Mr. Fair said. "You can't produce Ph.D.s rapidly. You have to attract them into the field when they are freshmen and sophomores. And if we have to get so many Ph.D.s by 2015, they better be [in colleges] already."