Vet Tech Programs in Texas

Thirteen of Texas's 15 entries award an associate degree — in every case an Associate of Applied Science — and the list is dominated by community and junior colleges: Austin Community College in Elgin, Blinn College in Bryan, Collin College in Wylie, Dallas College (formerly Cedar Valley College) in Lancaster, Lone Star College in Tomball, McLennan Community College in Waco, Palo Alto College in San Antonio, Tyler Junior College in Tyler and Weatherford College in Weatherford.

Three entries are separate campus listings of the same institution — Pima Medical Institute-El Paso, Pima Medical Institute-Houston and Pima Medical Institute-San Antonio — and The Vet Tech Institute of Houston is listed in Houston.

Texas A&M University-Kingsville, in Kingsville, and Texas A&M University-Commerce, in Commerce, award the state's 2 bachelor's degrees.

AVMA's entry for each program gives its city, degrees, dates and status line; anything else is a question for the school.

None of Texas's entries is on probationary or terminal status.

The 4 that carry anything other than a plain full-accreditation line all read INITIAL ACCREDITATION: Collin College in Wylie, Pima Medical Institute-San Antonio, Texas A&M University-Commerce and Weatherford College in Weatherford.

AVMA's own definition says initial accreditation is not punitive — it is simply the terminology given to newly accredited programs — and that graduates of an initially accredited program count as graduates of an AVMA CVTEA accredited program.

The 4 initial-accreditation dates run from March 4, 2021 (Pima Medical Institute-San Antonio) to February 23, 2023 (Texas A&M University-Commerce), with AVMA printing next evaluations of 2026, 2027 and 2028 across the 4.

For each of them, ask the school where it stands in that early-accreditation period, and ask for its published VTNE pass rate.

Texas A&M University-Kingsville in Kingsville awards a Bachelor of Science and holds full accreditation, with initial accreditation dated January 22, 2016 and a next evaluation of 2026.

Texas A&M University-Commerce in Commerce awards a Bachelor of Veterinary Biomedical Technology — a differently worded degree — and is one of the state's 4 initial-accreditation entries, with initial accreditation dated February 23, 2023 and a next evaluation of 2028.

So the newer of the 2 bachelor's programs is also the one whose status line a student should read first; both entries appear on the list above with their full details.

Dallas College (formerly Cedar Valley College), listed in Lancaster, is the only Texas-based program on AVMA's distance-education list, and both of AVMA's lists print full accreditation for it; the distance list gives its next evaluation as 2024.

AVMA names 13 distance programs in all, each listed under the state where it is based, and they are listed lower on this page.

For any of them, a Texas resident needs two answers from the school: whether it admits students living in Texas, and how it arranges the supervised clinical hours every accredited program requires at a practice near the student.

The Texas Board of Veterinary Medical Examiners licenses veterinary technicians as Licensed Veterinary Technicians (LVTs) under a law effective September 1, 2014, and its education requirement is a single route: graduation from an AVMA-accredited veterinary technician program.

The Board's page states in the same line that alternate routes are not accepted, so practice experience does not substitute for the program.

After graduating, an applicant passes the Veterinary Technician National Exam first, then the Texas State Board Exam.

Licensure itself is optional in the Board's words — what Texas reserves is the LVT title, which only license-holders may use — and licensed technicians owe 10 hours of continuing education a year.

Every program on the list above counts as AVMA-accredited, whatever its status line says.