Amarillo College, like most community colleges these days, is serving a growing number of students whose transcripts contain university credit hours. Some already have baccalaureate or master’s degrees. This semester alone, AC has 1,309 academic students whose applications for admission show they previously attended a four-year school for some length of time.

Students who leave four-year schools to attend community college are known as “reverse transfers.” They are motivated by, among other things, the abundance of career-oriented programs available at a school like AC and, naturally, by the state of the economy. After all, tuition and fees at Amarillo College are about one-third the cost of tuition and fees at a public university in Texas.

Such students can be found in most any of the diverse fields of study offered by community colleges, and it is no different at Amarillo College, where reverse transfers span the curriculum. But for a good many, especially those who understand the unique nature of the current job market in Texas, technical programs are a primary draw.

“People are beginning to comprehend that 80 percent of all available jobs in Texas do not require a college degree, and close to half of those jobs pay wages above the state average,” Jerry Moller, acting vice president and dean of instruction at Amarillo College, said. “Many of the most marketable degrees in Texas right now are technical degrees, and most can be completed in two years or less.”

That’s what Brent Berend is banking on. Berend, 28, earned a bachelor’s degree in finance from a major university, then, because jobs in his chosen field were scarce, he spent the next two years working part time as a bank teller. He eventually landed a full-time job as a loan officer with a Dallas bank, but he fell victim to the poor economy and was laid off just nine months later, his salary having peaked at $34,000.

So Berend, a native of Hereford, enrolled in the Wind Energy Program at Amarillo College, where he believes an associate degree will improve his marketability and bridge the gap to a lucrative career in a growing industry.

“I decided to learn to do something that makes a difference,” Berend said. “Wind energy is going to make a big difference economically for West Texas, and when I have an associate degree along with my bachelor’s, I believe I’ll be in a pretty good place.”

Of course only a small percentage of reverse transfers bring completed degrees to the table—Darryl Trapp of Amarillo is about 30 hours shy of his bachelor’s degree but decided that pursuing a certificate in wind energy at AC might be a better value in the long haul—but often they do bring a solid understanding of what it takes to succeed in higher education.

Dr. Kim Hays, who chairs AC’s Department of Manufacturing Technology, believes the influx of reverse transfers is already changing the perception of technical education programs.

“Yes, we’ve traditionally gotten students in these programs that couldn’t do anything else, guys who like to take stuff apart,” Hays said. “But for the first time in the 19 years I’ve been here, we’re getting a steady stream of qualified, capable students who simply want to do something else, who maybe are not satisfied with what they’ve been doing or with the money they’ve been making, people who simply want to go in a different direction with their professional lives.

“There’s never been a lot of prestige for guys who like to work with their hands for a living, but it can be pretty rewarding—pretty lucrative—so maybe that’s starting to change.”
Texas Comptroller Susan Combs reported last year that in 2007 there were 343,000 jobs in Texas requiring associate degrees and 79,000 jobs requiring certificates, with average annual earnings of $53,229 and $43,616, respectively. In her report, Combs provided a lengthy list of career possibilities that ranged in the degreed areas from registered nurses to mechanical engineering technicians, and in the certificate fields from avionics technicians to electronics installers.

Those career opportunities and many more are available at Amarillo College.

Ed Nolte, chairman of the Division of Industrial and Transportation Technology at Amarillo College, says technical education programs are more challenging today than ever before. The best-prepared students are the most likely to succeed.

“The students we’ve got coming in now with some university credits, even some with bachelor’s degrees, are excellent students. The degree programs we offer at AC are fulfilling their needs and desires,” Nolte said. “People who think technical programs are for those students who can’t do anything else are misinformed.

“You can be a plumber’s helper all your life, and there’s nothing wrong with that, but you can’t be the plumber without some high-level math. That’s just the way it is, and a lot of the students we’re getting today have already had it.”

AC, which has an open-enrollment policy, does offer award-winning developmental education programs for underprepared students seeking technical degrees. Even some reverse transfers find that a refresher course in math can be helpful.

“I’ve had to use trig or algebra in all my classes so far,” said Jake Cranmer, 24, who is working on a degree in heating, ventilating and air conditioning at AC. “I don’t remember having to study this hard when I got my degree in business.”