T - Transfer/Academic Courses: Designated by the Texas Higher Education Coordinating Board for general academic transfer among community, state, and technical colleges in Texas; and state public four-year colleges and universities as freshman and sophomore general education courses. Students should check with the transfer institution to verify applicability to their specific major.
N - WECM Courses: Designated by the Texas Higher Education Coordinating Board as workforce education (technical) courses offered for credit and CEUs (Continuing Education Units). While these courses are designed to transfer among state community colleges, they are not designed to automatically transfer to public four-year colleges and universities. Continuing education courses do not transfer to other colleges or to semester hour programs.
Credit Courses: A credit course is a college-level course, that if successfully completed can be applied toward the number of courses required for achieving an academic or workforce degree, diploma, certificate, or other formal award. In determining the award of credit for a course, Central Texas College’s definition of a semester credit hour and continuing education unit aligns with federal regulations 34 CFR 600.2; the Texas Administrative Code (TAC), Title 19, Chapter 4, Subchapter A, Rule 4.6 definitions of a credit hour; TAC Chapter 2, Subchapter A, Rule 2.3 and the THECB Career and Technical Education (CTE) Guidelines updated April 2025.
- A “semester credit hour” (SCH) means a unit of measure of instruction consisting of 60 minutes, of which 50 minutes must be direct instruction, over a 15-week period in a semester system.
- A “contact hour” means a time unit of instruction used by institutions of higher education consisting of 60 minutes, of which 50 minutes must be direct instruction.
- “Accelerated courses” mean courses delivered in shortened semesters which are expected to have the same number of contact hours and the same requirements for out-of-class learning as courses taught in a normal semester.
A credit hour is the amount of work represented in intended learning outcomes and verified by evidence of a student achievement that is an institutionally.
Continuing Education Unit Courses: A Continuing Education Course is a Coordinating Board-approved higher education technical curse offered for continuing education units and conducted in a competency based format. Such a course provides a quick and flexible response to business, industry, and student needs for intensive preparatory, supplemental, or upgrade training and education and has specific occupational and/or apprenticeship training objectives
For continuing education units, a ratio of 1 CEU to 10 contact hours is used. The total number of contact hours is divided by 10 to determine the number of CEUs, which may be expressed as a decimal. For example, 17 contact hours equals 1.7 CEU. Additional information about continuing education courses and units are available in the THECB Career and Technical Education (CTE) Guidelines and the THECB Glossary of Terms dated September 13, 2023.