MISSION, Texas - The importance of placing students into jobs after graduation was discussed during a 2025 RGV Legislative Tour panel discussion about higher and public education.
The four participating panelists were UT-Rio Grande Valley President Guy Bailey, Texas State Technical College System Regent Lizzy De La Garza Putegnat, Edinburg CISD Trustee Letty Garcia, and South Texas ISD Superintendent Marco Antonio “Tony” Lara.
Veronica Gonzales, senior vice president for UTRGV, moderated the panel. Gonzales asked De La Garza Putegnat what TSTC was doing in terms of helping students land jobs after graduation.
De La Garza Putegnat said TSTC has been working with the industry in order to align its programs to workforce needs in Texas. To this end, TSTC has 11 campuses throughout Texas and there is a 12th campus on the way.
De La Garza Putegnat pointed out that TSTC gets funding based on the placement of its students in the workforce.
“Statewide, our placement rate is 83 percent,” De La Garza Putegnat said. “The market leading placement rate, traditionally your community colleges, range from 20 percent to 60 percent placement rates. But again because of our funding formula (and) because our goal is to place more Texans in great paying jobs, there’s no wonder why we have a market-leading weight of 83 percent.
De La Garza Putegnat pointed to a report released recently by the Texas Higher Education Coordinating Board. The report said 80 percent of students entering the power alignment industry come from TSTC, Roughly, 60 percent of advanced manufacturing, 40 percent of diesel mechanics and 30 percent of building trade graduates come from TSTC.
“TSTC produces the highest amounts of welders in the state of Texas and so that job placement rate, again, because of the incentive that we have to place more Texans in great paying jobs,” De La Garza Putegnat said. “That is why we are leading the market.”
In terms of industry partners, TSTC has over 7,000 of them throughout Texas.
“TSTC works very closely with industry,” she said. “We don’t just have industry advisory councils to check a box, we actually work with them. They help us build our curriculum (and) they help us tailor training.”
De La Garza Putegnat said TSTC also offers continuing education workforce training programs where they work with employers for shorter term training in order to produce higher skills.
“Sometimes they (employers) come to us, and they say, you know what, we need to either reskill or upskill our employees. How can you help us?” she said. “So, we work with the Governor’s office, the Texas Workforce Commission through Skills Development Fund Grants to be able to help these employers train their employees at no cost to them.”
She added that TSTC has a lot of different partnerships locally.
“We work very closely with the hospitals for our Allied Health Program and our nursing program,” she said. “We work closely with SpaceX. We work closely with Tesla, in fact Tesla asked TSTC to have the two training centers for Tesla.”
