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Davis Technical College asks for growth funding after enrollment surge, highlights Title IX shared-service
Summary
Davis Technical College told the legislature it met several performance metrics, increased FAFSA completion and used growth and performance funding to add faculty, expand programs and fund a shared Title IX investigator with Weber State; college leaders requested continued growth funding to meet rising demand.
Darren Brush, president of Davis Technical College, told the Higher Education Appropriations Subcommittee that Davis Tech has met multiple performance metrics and is seeking ongoing growth funding to serve rising enrollment.
Brush said the college increased FAFSA completion by more than 19% compared with the prior year, enabling more than 500 additional students to receive financial aid. He told the committee Davis Tech collected about $3.3 million in tuition and awarded nearly $2.2 million in financial aid in the past year.
The nut of Davis Tech’s budget request, Brush said, is instructional capacity. He told legislators that nearly three-quarters of a million dollars in growth funding awarded last year was used to hire additional full‑time faculty in programs showing immediate growth — architectural engineering design, commercial driver license (CDL), phlebotomy, welding and apprenticeship instruction — and to cover software and practical nursing program costs. Brush said the college added faculty whose hires allowed enrollment gains (for example, +15 students in architectural engineering and +30 in phlebotomy through midyear) and increased apprenticeship and welding enrollments by “over 100 students.”
Brush told the committee Davis Tech invested a portion of performance funding to create a shared Title IX investigator arranged with Weber State University and Ogden‑Weber Technical College. “We weren’t very sophisticated in terms of our Title IX responses and requirements,” Brush said. He said Weber State will hire the investigator and provide training; Davis Tech is contributing funding and aligning regional policies as a shared service.
Brush reported institutional outcomes: about 7,200 headcount in 2024 (just under 2,000 FTE), an 80% overall course completion rate, an 85% job placement rate tied to students’ field of study and 100% licensure in one‑third of state‑licensed programs. He said Davis Tech graduates 144 practical nurses annually and that all practical nursing graduates are admitted without application into Weber State’s RN program taught on the Davis Tech campus.
Brush highlighted the college’s partnership with the Utah Department of Corrections, noting Davis Tech enrolled 299 incarcerated students last year and graduated 107 from prison‑based programs. He cited a Department of Corrections statistic presented to the committee showing a 25% recidivism rate for students who participated in Davis Tech programming versus a 66% recidivism rate for a comparable population that did not participate in the programs.
The president closed his presentation by introducing the college’s 2025 student of the year, Ludwig Campos, who described Davis Tech as offering “opportunity” and “discipline” and said the college “changed my life.”
Ending: Committee members praised the college’s partnerships with local high schools, Weber State, and the Department of Corrections. Davis Tech asked the committee to support the consensus system budget’s growth request for technical colleges to fund instructional capacity, faculty, and equipment for an expanding welding building and other program needs.
