What do students from Frank Phillips College in the Texas panhandle town of Borger, from Howard College in San Angelo, and from Lee College on the East Texas Gulf Coast all have in common?
They are taking online courses from Northwest Vista College for credit, but they are not NVC or Alamo Colleges students. They are students from colleges that are members of the Digital Higher Education Consortium of Texas—Digitex—an innovative program that allows community college students from all over the state to earn credit from other member colleges without going through the admissions process. And, as a teaching college, NVC earns revenue—a teaching fee that is paid by the home colleges—for each Digitex enrollment.
Presently (Fall 2022) we have 18 students enrolled from Digitex member colleges and have earned $4,050 in revenue. We project about 31 enrollments in the Spring 2023 semester which would result in additional revenue of $6,975. The teaching fee is not tuition; it is simply a fee that is paid directly to the NVC Teaching with Technology department. The revenue is then shared with the academic departments that made the courses available: 60% to the departments and 40% to fund the Teaching with Technology annual budget.
In 2022, Digitex revenue allowed faculty to attend a conference in support of the new Peace & Conflict Center, purchased a subscription to library databases and to a virtual reality platform, and funded new equipment for the Math department.
If you teach online or fully remote courses and would like to learn more about this innovative program, please visit the DigiTex page in the NVC All Faculty Handbook, or contact Adela Gonzales at [email protected].
By Daniel Powell
NVC Vice President for Academic Success
