About 103,000 students are projected to start the fall semester at Alamo Colleges District, a goal reached at least a year ahead of schedule as it faces revenue woes. 

“Of course with additional enrollment comes additional financial pressure that we’ll have to collectively navigate,” said Thomas Cleary, vice chancellor of planning, performance and information systems, during a board meeting Tuesday evening. 

“But if you have any problem as an institution, this is the problem to have,” he continued.  

Cleary’s update was met with applause by district leaders and administrators who as of this summer were expecting to hit the 100,000 student mark by the fall of 2027, a year ahead of their 2025 predictions.

Reaching 103,000 this fall across the five colleges — San Antonio College, St. Philip’s College, Palo Alto College, Northwest Vista College and Northeast Lakeview College — means the district will add about 13,400 students since fall 2025. 

“In fall of [2025] UTSA had 42,000 students. So, we’ve essentially added a UTSA since the fall of 2022,” said Alamo Colleges Chancellor Mike Flores during the meeting. 

This rapid growth, however, comes at a time when Alamo Colleges officials have had to tighten their belts due to revenue streams not keeping up with the pace of enrollment.

As of June, the board of trustees approved a balanced operating budget of nearly $586 million for fiscal year 2027 that relies on a $0.0125 property tax increase — the district’s first in more than a decade — to address a $28 million shortfall. This budget accounted for a total enrollment of 95,726 students for the fall of 2026. 

Officials pointed out that the enrollment growth rate was 3.2 times higher than the district’s revenue growth, half of which comes from property taxes and the other half is divided between tuition and state revenue. 

Adding to this fiscal deficit, is the fact that community colleges across Texas outperformed the state’s expectation under House Bill 8, which ties state funding to student outcomes, resulting in a loss of millions of dollars for many schools. Alamo Colleges alone is expecting to receive $3.9 million less in its 2027 allocation than what they originally qualified for. 

Without enough revenue to balance the operating budget, student support services such as AlamoBOOKS+, which comes at a cost of more than $22 million, or AlamoPromise slated to cost $7.5 million in 2027, could be at risk of losing funding. 

After the meeting Cleary said this new enrollment projection takes into consideration their enrollment changes, as well as the ebb and flow of students right before the start of the fall semester, which for Alamo Colleges is later this month on Aug. 24,  

Cleary said he wouldn’t be surprised if the census day number — the number reported to state and federal agencies —  surpasses 103,000 students. 

Leading this growth is dual credit students — high school students who are taking college courses though Alamo Colleges —  which over the last few years have grown by at least 30% across the district’s affiliated high schools. 

Early spring projections pointed at 24,897 dual credit students for the fall 2026 semester, but as of this Tuesday, that number grew to 27,616. 

“Just a few short years ago, we celebrated record enrollment of dual credit with 14,000 students, but that was serving less than 10% of the high school students in Bexar County,” said Sara Mann, chief high school programs officer. 

That goal was met in 2023, and the colleges have since added more than 16,600 dual credit students. 

“Just at [Northwest Vista] alone we have 11,498 dual credit students this year as of today,” said Northwest Vista College President Amy Bosley during the meeting. “It’s a 55% increase in just one year at Vista.” 

This growth is linked to the 17 new Northeast ISD teachers who completed a tuition-free program through a partnership with Alamo Colleges and St. Mary’s University. The goal was to place teachers certified to teach dual credit in high-need high schools across the district. 

“We’ve seen a 150% increase in participation from students at those highest need high schools with the lowest college-going rates,” Bosley said. 

In June, the board was presented with several tax rate increase options, but accepted the recommendation to adopt the rate increase that does not require a vote. It is still unclear is this is still the avenue that will be formally adopted.

These updates, as well as an updated budget review, are expected to be discussed during the next regular board meeting on Tuesday, Aug. 18. The board has until Sept. 30 to set and adopt a tax rate.

The San Antonio Report partners with Open Campus on higher education coverage.