El Paso Community College is getting $285,000 in state money to help students skip the cost of textbooks, and the timing could not be more pointed. The grant lands right as Governor Greg Abbott and Democratic challenger Gina Hinojosa spend the final stretch before the November election arguing over who actually makes college cheaper for Texas families.
Abbott announced Monday that nine Texas higher education institutions were sharing $2.025 million in grants through the state's Open Educational Resource Grant Program, according to the El Paso Times. El Paso Community College was one of seven institutions to receive a $285,000 workforce grant. In contrast, Texas A&M University–Kingsville and West Texas A&M University each received $15,000 nursing grants, per the Office of the Texas Governor. Abbott said the grants would expand access to free learning materials and make education more affordable for Texans, adding that the state's schools offer a competitive education for a variety of high-demand careers.
The money is aimed squarely at fields the state considers short-staffed. The governor's office highlighted nursing, cybersecurity, electrical technology, and business as key targeted fields for the 2026-2028 grant cycle, which prioritizes the development of Workforce Education Course Manuals and the adoption of nursing courses. In El Paso specifically, the local nursing shortage is not abstract: the city has between 600 and 1,000 active nursing positions open, with registered nurses earning roughly $72,600 to $79,500 a year, or about $35 to $38 an hour.
A Program Built Since 2018
The Open Educational Resource Grant Program is not new. Abbott and the 85th Texas Legislature created it in 2018, and the program has since assisted more than 33,000 Texas students and saved an estimated $3.5 million in textbook costs, according to the Texas Higher Education Coordinating Board. Students can tap into those free materials through the OERTx digital library, and EPCC's Associate Degree in Nursing program, established in 1972, posted a 96% NCLEX-RN pass rate in 2024, per Data USA.
EPCC serves a large and financially stretched student body. The college enrolled 25,567 undergraduates in 2024, including 8,151 full-time and 17,416 part-time students, and operates as a Hispanic-Serving Institution where 38% of undergraduates receive grant financial aid, Data USA reports. That scale is part of why community colleges statewide also lean on the funding overhaul in House Bill 8, passed in 2023, which directed more than $680 million toward an outcome-based formula rewarding institutions for student completions in high-demand fields and successful transfers to four-year universities, according to the Office of the Texas Governor.
Tuition Freeze Meets Fee Hikes
The grant announcement follows Abbott's broader affordability push. On May 27, the governor issued a directive freezing undergraduate tuition and mandatory fees across all Texas public two-year and four-year colleges through the 2026-2027 academic year, extending a policy he first put in place under the 88th Texas Legislature in 2023. But that freeze has run into friction: the University of Texas System Board of Regents approved mandatory non-academic fee increases across six UT campuses on May 21, 2026, to cover rising athletic and medical service costs, staying under a 3.7% cap on total cost-of-attendance increases, according to The Daily Texan. The episode illustrates ongoing tension over whether non-academic fees fall under the executive tuition freeze at all.
Hinojosa, an Austin state representative since 2017 and former Austin ISD school board president, has not released a specific policy to lower the cost of college, but her campaign carries a broader populist economic message. Her camp emphasizes eliminating corrupt vendor contracts and reducing Texas Education Agency bureaucracy, with plans to free up revenue for direct classroom investment and reduce the economic burden of public education on families. Hinojosa launched her campaign focusing on cutting living costs, boosting public school funding and rooting out corrupt state vendor contracts, as Hoodline previously reported, and she won the Democratic nomination in March after campaigning against private school vouchers.
A Dead-Heat Race Heads Toward November
The dueling messages arrive as the governor's race stays remarkably tight. A July Fox News poll showed Abbott leading Hinojosa 50% to 49% among registered voters, within the survey's 3-percentage-point margin of error, though Hinojosa held a 16-point lead among Latino voters and a 27-point edge with independents. The two candidates are also set to meet on a debate stage: Hinojosa accepted an invitation on July 1 to a televised gubernatorial debate in Fort Worth scheduled for October 15, four days before early voting opens.
The election calendar is now coming into focus. Texas voter registration closes October 5, early voting runs from October 19 through October 30, and the deadline to request a mail-in absentee ballot is October 23, or October 19 for in-person requests. Absentee ballots must be returned by mail or in person by November 3, the same day Abbott and Hinojosa face off in the general election.
