Is Texas on track to prepare students for in-demand jobs by 2030?

North Texas faces a significant challenge in meeting the ambitious statewide higher education goals set by Gov. Greg Abbott a decade ago.

The goals include a 60% postsecondary attainment rate and producing 550,000 graduates annually, a big hill to climb as North Texas and the state prepare their workforce for future demands.

Texas’ postsecondary attainment rate is 52%, with 44% holding degrees and 9% short-term credentials, according to data obtained from the Texas Higher Education Coordinating Board.

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State data shows Texas falling short by 146,931 graduates.

Students’ ability to access and afford postsecondary education undercuts these ambitions, according to education advocates in interviews with The Dallas Morning News.

Statewide initiatives and efforts among colleges and agencies are striving to bridge this gap. Texas can hit its target by investing in trade-focused associate’s degrees, workforce credentials, and its new direct admissions program, according to education officials and workforce advocates in interviews with The News.

“We want to get to 60% over the next five years,” said Wynn Rosser, commissioner of higher education for the higher education board, in an interview with The News. “We’re headed in the right direction, but currently we’re short of that goal.”

Millions of new residents are expected to enter North Texas within the next 25 years to fill hundreds of thousands of new jobs as businesses flock to the region and employees retire, according to workforce advocates and data from the North Central Texas Council of Governments – an association of local governments in the Dallas-Fort Worth area.

State data shows the skills gap already forces companies to seek out-of-state talent.

Workforce advocates fear North Texans will lack access to future living-wage jobs, which elude two-out-of-three young adults in Dallas County due to educational gaps.

“What’s at risk is having two things that shouldn’t live together. One is a vibrant economy, and one is high child poverty,” said Eric Ban, the Commit Partnership’s executive director of economic mobility systems, in an interview with The News. (The Commit Partnership is a supporter of the Future of North Texas initiative at The News).

“Our responsibility is to help more people participate in that thriving economy, and to make that economy and our community even more thriving.”

Abbott’s ambitious plan

A decade ago in McKinney, Abbott announced his ambitious 60×30 plan to elevate higher education statewide. The goal was for 60% of Texas’ 25- to 34-year-old residents to obtain a degree or credential by 2030.

Three years ago, the Texas Higher Education Coordinating Board extended the age range to include those up to 64 in an updated “Building a Talent Strong Texas” plan. The new plan tracks the 25- to 34-year-old and 35- to 64-year-old groups separately, officials say.

Dan Hooper, executive director of ScholarShot – a Dallas-based nonprofit helping first-generation students earn college credentials and degrees – told The News in an email that when Texas updated its 60×30 plan to include native Texans up to age 65, it also added credentialed people moving to Texas from other states, which increased the state’s attainment percentage.

That matters, because, by 2031, 63% of jobs in Texas will require employees to have an education beyond high school, according to a report by Georgetown University.

But less than 30% of Texas eighth-graders from the 2011-2013 cohort earned a degree or credential within six years of high school graduation, with 25% never attempting post-secondary education, said Jaime Puente, economic opportunity director for the social justice organization Every Texan, in an interview with The News.

Despite significant investments in real estate in Dallas and its suburbs, such as McKinney, Allen, Plano, and Frisco, existing gaps in education and workforce development, coupled with the rising cost of living, have left many residents underskilled, said Lynn McBee, the city of Dallas’ workforce czar, in an interview with The News.

This has forced residents to take low-wage positions as companies have hired talent from outside the region, she said.

“Dallas has been very guilty of importing talent,” McBee said. “I want us to grow our local talent. We can’t have generational poverty anymore.”

The city in recent years has partnered with institutions such as Dallas ISD and Dallas College to prioritize career institutes and dual enrollment programs.

These initiatives help students obtain certifications and associate degrees that lead to in-demand employment in skilled labor and vocational jobs, including work in construction and health care, McBee said.

“We just can’t run our cities, we can’t run an economy, if we don’t have a skilled workforce,” she said, “and so I think the state has identified that, and they wouldn’t invest all this money if they didn’t know that we need to develop these workforces.”

Abbott deemed career training an emergency item this year, putting pressure on lawmakers to strengthen workforce pathways before the legislative session ended in June.

“We want to ensure that every child is prepared either to go to college or to go into a good paying career,” Abbott said during his State of the State address.

Affording college

Texas students and parents most frequently cite college affordability and fear of debt as barriers to achieving a higher education, Commissioner Rosser told The News.

Education advocates echo this concern.

“What they’re telling us very clearly is one of the biggest barriers they face to staying on track and completing [college], and that’s just being able to afford to do it.” said Jonathan Feinstein, Texas state director of the national pro-equity nonprofit EdTrust, in an interview with The News.

The burden falls upon the entire education pipeline to bridge the gap for students like Nadaijah Motton, 20, who considered college unaffordable.

Motton attends Dallas College and is on track to earn an engine repair and performance technician certificate. She told The News more students should follow her lead and seek opportunities for an affordable higher education through Dallas County Promise.

The program, spearheaded by Commit Partnership, collaborates with regional colleges and universities to bridge the gap between financial aid and tuition, depending on available funding.

“For somebody who didn’t want to go to college, I’m glad I did take that whim and come,” Motton said. “It might not be a degree, but I still have a background and I’m still able to learn more than I would have … so I say, take advantage of it. At least something is better than nothing.”

Harrison Keller, the University of North Texas’ president, told The News he doubts Abbott wants to see increases in college tuition and fees.

“The legislature and the governor have been vigilant about keeping the prices down and also making investments in need-based student aid,” said Keller, the previous higher education chief who oversaw the expansion of Texas’ higher education plan.

60×30: Educating North Texas’ workforce amid the region’s economic growth

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Legislative efforts

In November, the University of Texas System announced plans to expand its needs-based financial aid program, called the Promise Plus Program, to ensure students whose families make less than $100,000 annually will get free tuition and waived fees at any of UT’s academic universities.

The expansion is expected to ensure that over 7 million Texas families will meet the income requirements for the program, according to UT officials. Meanwhile, Texas Christian University announced in August that Texans whose families make $70,000 or less annually will be able to get free tuition.

State lawmakers in June passed new state laws meant to reinforce the career training that has positioned Texas as a leader in workforce development.

Those laws will provide more career-technical funding for Texas’ school districts and community colleges. In November, Texans will also vote on a constitutional amendment that would create an endowment for the Texas State Technical College System, which would use special funds outside the general revenue fund to support educational capital projects and equipment purchases.

Sen. Brandon Creighton, R-Conroe, authored and passed legislation to increase access to the Financial Aid for Swift Transfer program, which gives low-income high school students access to free dual credit courses.

Education advocates credit Texas for improving access to higher education through state aid programs. The passage of House Bill 8 in 2023, for instance, established the Financial Aid for Swift Transfer program. Also that year, the Legislature invested an additional $683 million in Texas’ community colleges.

These efforts, education advocates say, have resulted in more low-income and rural students obtaining short-term workforce credentials.

Job opportunities

In order to maintain Texas’ standing as the world’s eighth-largest economy, Talent Strong Texas’ success hinges upon preparing students for high-demand jobs, advocates say.

Texas is on track to have over 1.8 million job openings annually between 2022 and 2032, according to the Texas Workforce Commission. Among the top five of Texas’ 28 Workforce Development Area regions for projected annual openings, Dallas ranks second with 247,547 openings, North Central Texas third with 187,605 and Tarrant County fifth with 140,603 openings.

In June, for instance, Texas had an estimated 547,879 job advertisements, including 168,643 in the Dallas-Fort Worth-Arlington metro area, more than any other Texas metro region, according to The Conference Board, a business research group.

Additionally, nearly a quarter of North Texas’ workforce are set to retire soon, said Phedra Redifer, executive director of Workforce Solutions for North Central Texas, in an interview with The News.

Even though 350,000 seniors graduate annually in Texas, Redifer said there’s still a mismatch between the skills job candidates possess and what employers need, particularly in fields like technology, health care and advanced manufacturing.

In the combined region of the North Central Texas, Dallas and Tarrant workforce development areas, the occupations projected to add the most jobs through 2032 are general and operations managers, software developers, stockers and order fillers, laborers and freight, stock, and material movers and fast food and counter workers, according to the commission.

The occupations projected to grow the fastest through 2032 with employment greater than or equal to 1,000 in 2022 are operations research analysts, nurse practitioners, data scientists, physician assistants, personal financial advisors, and software developers, according to the commission.

“The statewide gap” – the difference between current demand and current supply in June 2025 – “for most of these top occupations is negative, signaling greater supply than demand,” said Sarah Fischer, a workforce commission spokesperson, in an email to The News.

The current supply refers to the short-term supply from the commission’s WorkInTexas.com job matching website, which only captures those that register with the state workforce system, Fischer said.

However, she said, the region appears to have a greater demand than supply for personal financial advisers, software developers, physician assistants, and nurse practitioners.

Texas’ 28 workforce development boards are tasked with partnering with employers, colleges and universities to develop support for the students seeking the skills needed for those jobs.

“The demand is going to continue to increase,” Redifer said. “We have more new occupations than we’ve seen in quite some time, so it is super important for us to not lose focus.”

Hiring demand

The demand among employers goes beyond health care and vocational jobs. Joseph Seabrooks, president of Dallas College’s Cedar Valley Campus, said hiring demand in the freight, mobility and logistics sectors is “off the charts.”

“They are on the verge of desperation. … The good news about that is that it has ratcheted up the wages,” Seabrooks said. The bad news is those sectors can’t keep their bottom line profitable without a workforce, he said.

Job recruiters at Dallas College’s career fair reiterated the importance of hiring workers with knowledge beyond high school.

Edgar Hernandez, a corporate recruiter at Stevens Transport, said his company hires Dallas College students as parts specialists or mechanics, among other roles, because the school’s programs prepare them for their workplace.

Bradley Little, operations director at Kubota, which makes agricultural machinery, said his company is “hiring for everything” from sales staff to technicians. Calling Dallas College a partner in building a talent pipeline, Little said he’s interested in giving North Texas students a tour of the business to gauge their interest in the automotive and diesel fields.

Rebecca Burns, a human resources generalist at automotive retailer Lithia & Driveway, also said the automotive industry is in high demand for vehicle technicians.

“It is important to have those skills and certifications, especially in an industry like ours that requires things like electrical training,” Burns said.

Importance of partnerships

Keller, the UNT president, stressed that partnerships across higher education institutions and employers will ensure students are equipped for the future workforce.

“The critical piece of that has got to be that continued commitment from the state to affordability,” he said. “We don’t just want to award more credentials. We have to commit that those credentials will become credentials of value to students and their families and taxpayers.”

Lawmakers in June passed laws to enact a 20% increase in Texas’ financial aid program budget, providing an additional $320 million for students, said Rosser. Students who are recipients of the Texas Educational Opportunity Grant at community colleges will now receive a continuance of aid when they transfer to a university, he said.

The pressure is on everyone to do more to prepare students for the future – otherwise, companies may lose confidence in their reasons for doing business in Texas, Redifer said.

“If we don’t do this critical work, we will slow the growth of North Texas,” she said. “We have to continue to make sure that we develop and train that workforce today and for generations to come.”

This reporting is part of the Future of North Texas, a community-funded journalism initiative supported by the Commit Partnership, Communities Foundation of Texas, The Dallas Foundation, the Dallas Mavericks, the Dallas Regional Chamber, Deedie Rose, the McCune-Losinger Family Fund, The Meadows Foundation, the Perot Foundation, the United Way of Metropolitan Dallas and the University of Texas at Dallas. The News retains full editorial control of this coverage.