Texans approve $850 million endowment for Texas State Technical College
By Nicholas Gutteridge, The Texas Tribune
November 4, 2025
Texas voters on Tuesday seemed poised to approve the creation of an $850 million endowment for the struggling Texas State Technical College, the state’s primary higher education system for workforce development.
Texas has 11 TSTC campuses. Unlike the state’s community colleges, TSTC does not have taxing authority to issue bonds, and underfunding has led to a halt in critical capital improvements. TSTC officials have said they will use the endowment to fix campus infrastructure, upgrade classroom equipment and expand its footprint across the state.
The constitutional amendment to fund the college came after Gov. Greg Abbott made workforce training a priority during the regular legislative session earlier this year. Texas employers have been signaling a decline in skilled workers for fields such as plumbing and welding, which could threaten Texas’ economy.
Proposition 1 was one of 17 constitutional amendments on the ballot this year, and preliminary voting results from the Texas Secretary of State showed all of them poised to pass.
Proponents of the allocation said it would help build training facilities and close the skills gap in Texas, while critics argued that creating an endowment for TSTC would limit government spending oversight and transparency.
The $850 million endowment will come out of the general revenue fund and be put into the Texas Institution Infrastructure Fund. The comptroller’s office will funnel some of those dollars into a new Workforce Education Fund for the technical college to access. TSTC officials estimate those funds will result in an estimated $40 million in extra money available to the college for improvements annually.
TSTC’s struggles come amid rising student enrollment across the state. According to data the college shared with The Texas Tribune, the school had to turn away 500 young adults ready to be trained for the workforce this fall because facilities for about two dozen programs had reached their capacity limit.
The state’s looming labor cliff has increased the pressure on TSTC. With an aging workforce and increased demand, Texas is estimating a need for 7,000 plumbers, 4,500 HVAC technicians and 10,000 electricians by 2030.
“We have to keep up with the demand for trained technicians to keep our economy going,” said Joe Arnold, the deputy vice chancellor of governmental relations at TSTC. “If the economy goes south, then the citizens of Texas are the ones that are ultimately going to suffer.”
Funding at Texas State Technical College depends on graduates getting economic value out of their degree and joining the workforce. If students don’t get a job in their field within six months of graduation, they can get their money back. The state also won’t pay the school.
Advocates say the technical college’s inability to levy taxes and raise bonds puts it at a real disadvantage compared to peer education institutions. For example, the Alamo Colleges District in San Antonio secured nearly $1 billion in bond money this spring to keep up with growth, and Austin Community College obtained $770 million the same way three years prior.
The technical school has been at the mercy of state lawmakers, which has resulted in uneven funding from year to year and made it hard for the school to plan for big projects. The Legislature occasionally has given the school extra money through what is known as capital construction assistance projects. It allowed the school to break ground on a new building at its Waco campus, which officials estimate will allow TSTC to increase enrollment by 30%.
Tuesday’s elections were the culmination of lawmakers’ second attempt to put a constitutional amendment on the ballot to fund the college. In 2023, the effort failed in conference committee, and Abbott later vetoed the corresponding budget line item, which some at the Capitol described as a signal of his disappointment with property tax negotiations.
Disclosure: Texas Secretary of State has been a financial supporter of The Texas Tribune, a nonprofit, nonpartisan news organization that is funded in part by donations from members, foundations and corporate sponsors. Financial supporters play no role in the Tribune’s journalism. Find a complete list of them here.
This article first appeared on The Texas Tribune.