Enrollment is up at public HBCUs in NC. What’s behind the trend?

Things are looking up at North Carolina Central University — literally.

For the second year in a row, the historically Black university in Durham leads all 16 of the state’s public universities in enrollment growth, with an increase of 7.7% this fall alone. The university’s total enrollment of 8,579 includes 1,753 first-year students, accounting for the largest freshman class in the school’s 114-year history.

The numbers are a notable improvement for NC Central, which in recent years was identified as one of a handful of schools in the UNC System that were “most impacted by changing enrollment patterns.” The university’s enrollment dipped from 2018 to 2019, then grew only slightly before dropping again between 2020 and 2022, and finally rebounding last fall.

“It’s a very exciting time for NCCU,” Chancellor Karrie Dixon told The News & Observer of this fall’s enrollment.

And NC Central isn’t the only HBCU in the UNC System that has a reason to celebrate this fall: Enrollment totals at all five of the system’s HBCUs are up.

That matches the trend across the UNC System, which this fall enrolled more students than ever before and saw enrollment growth at all 16 campuses.

It also matches a trend specific to HBCUs across the country, which saw increases in applications in the most recent admissions cycle. NC Central, for instance, saw a 27% increase in applications during that cycle .

North Carolina A&T State University — the country’s largest HBCU by enrollment — received about 4,000 more applications from prospective first-year students during that cycle than the previous one, Associate Vice Provost for Enrollment Joseph Montgomery told The N&O, contributing to a roughly 350% increase in applications since 2011.

Some national reports have linked the increased interest in HBCUs across the country to the U.S. Supreme Court’s decision last year to overturn race-conscious admissions policies. Though there are nuances to the trends this fall, some experts have posited that, with some highly selective, predominantly white colleges enrolling fewer students of color, those students could be more likely to consider and choose schools that place them — and their wellbeing and success — at the forefront of their missions.

“That was always a possibility that we, as HBCU leaders, had discussed, that that could possibly benefit HBCUs as students try to look at options that they have for higher education across our country,” said Dixon, who was formerly the chancellor at Elizabeth City State University, another HBCU in the UNC System.

But NC Central and the UNC System’s other HBCUs aren’t pinning their successes to the high court’s ruling. Instead, they say their increases in enrollment come after years of concerted, targeted efforts to recruit and retain students.

NCCU’s recruitment efforts

Dixon said the university didn’t have specific data showing a link between the Supreme Court’s decision and the growth NC Central is seeing this fall. But anecdotally, she said, students have chosen to attend the university because “they want to be at NCCU” and they appreciate the resources and promises it offers.

“They see the quality of the education. They see the quality of the experience, as a student, that they would receive here,” Dixon said. “They see the quality of faculty we have, and they see the great things that our alumni are doing in their careers across the country and internationally.”

That rings true for Makiya Benton, a first-year student, and Xyimea Fuller, a junior. Both students from Plymouth, North Carolina, told The N&O that the success of both the university’s current students and its alumni were major draws in deciding to attend NC Central.

Fuller always knew she wanted to attend an HBCU, she said, “because it’s like a home away from home.” With multiple NCCU alumni in her family, that’s especially true. But it’s not just her family — Fuller sees the heavy involvement of alumni across the university as a major plus-factor.

“You see the success of people that go here, and it makes you want to go here even more,” Fuller said.

Both Fuller and Benton said the tours they took of campus as prospective students helped seal the deal on NC Central for them. Coming from a small community in Eastern North Carolina, it was important for them to get a feel for the campus — “big, but not too big,” in Fuller’s words — before committing.

Benton, who applied to a mix of HBCUs and predominately white colleges in- and out-of-state, said the student tour guides were relatable and personable and showed her the success she could achieve if she chose to attend NCCU.

“The campus leaders, they are way more engaging than other schools,” Benton said.

Prospective students are likely more aware of those factors now, due to increased recruitment efforts the university has implemented in recent years. Michael Bailey, NC Central’s director of undergraduate admissions, told The N&O this spring that his office is using “extremely intentional,” data-driven efforts to recruit prospective students and expand the university’s outreach across the state.

The university has also worked to raise awareness of itself and increase its brand recognition, Dixon said, which she views as a major factor in the school’s growth this year. Among other efforts, the university routinely highlights its Eagle Promise program, which emphasizes on-time graduation and career readiness. The recent success of the school’s football team, which has competed and won on national stages, doesn’t hurt the university’s profile, either, Dixon said.

Benton, who isn’t “really a big football fan,” said other aspects of campus life, like the activities offered by the Student Activities Board and the university’s focus on community service, have helped her adjust in her first several weeks on campus.

“There’s multiple opportunities just for you to come out and get involved, so that way you don’t have to be stuck up in your dorm or feeling lonely,” Benton said.

Keeping enrollment steady

Dixon attributes NC Central’s growth “to us getting out there, telling our story, really focusing on our brand, our outreach across the state of North Carolina with recruitment and beyond.”

Those efforts have widened NC Central’s applicant pool, which in turn increases the amount of students who may choose to enroll.

At a September meeting of the UNC System Board of Governors, system President Peter Hans told reporters that he wanted to “better understand” the enrollment trends at NC Central, particularly after the university experienced rapid growth after a couple years of declines. He would like to see the university operate “in a little bit more stable manner” because of the impact such trends can have on funding.

Enrollment numbers, particularly if they are low or volatile, can significantly impact the amount of state funding a campus receives. As colleges in North Carolina and across the country confront a looming “demographic cliff” that is likely to bring fewer traditional-aged college students to campuses, recruiting adults could offset the impacts of those anticipated declines.

Periods of declining enrollments and corresponding budget shortfalls at UNC Greensboro and UNC Asheville led the universities to cut several academic programs this spring, while similar circumstances at Winston-Salem State University — another HBCU — eliminated dozens of jobs to address a $3 million deficit.

To keep enrollment stable at NC Central, Dixon said she plans to expand the university’s “pipelines” of prospective students — broadening its scope beyond high school graduates to tap into additional groups, such as adult learners and veterans.

Some of those efforts are already paying off: This fall, the university enrolled 624 transfer students and second-degree students, and 13% of its students are adults, outside of the traditional college-age bracket of 18- to 24-year-olds. More than 1,300 students, or 16% of the university’s total enrollment, are pursuing their degrees online.

“The foundation is there, prior to my starting as chancellor here at NCCU, but we’re going to enhance that even more,” said Dixon, who began her chancellorship at NC Central in July.

Focusing on retention at Fayetteville State

About 90 miles away from NC Central, fellow HBCU Fayetteville State University is also experiencing growth this fall.

For the first time on record, the university — the second-oldest in the public UNC System — has a total enrollment of more than 7,000 students. Overall, enrollment is up by 3.8% compared to last fall, continuing a trend of steady growth over the past decade.

That growth is partly driven by an increase in new students, Vice Chancellor Pamela Baldwin told The N&O, but it is also a result of more students staying at the university year-over-year to continue their studies — a key focus of Chancellor Darrell Allison, who began his role in 2021.

“Retention has been something that’s been top of mind,” Baldwin said.

In recent years, the university has implemented a host of programs that leaders, including Allison and Baldwin, say are directly improving retention rates. Among other efforts, that includes establishing a centralized advising center for students where they can receive help with academic planning, financial aid and career services, and offering free summer school to all students to keep them on track to graduate on time or ahead of schedule.

On the recruitment front, the university has tried to target “three big buckets” of students, Baldwin said: traditional first-time freshmen, transfer students and military-affiliated students. Though the university enrolled a smaller first-year class this fall compared to last year’s, it enrolled more transfer students and veterans.

The latter groups are especially important given the university’s location near Fort Liberty and other areas heavily populated with veterans and their families. In its efforts to recruit and better serve students from the military community, the university has a dedicated resource center for veterans, and also offers free tuition to military-affiliated students. (The university also offers significantly discounted tuition to all students as a member of the NC Promise Tuition Plan. )

Baldwin said the Supreme Court’s decision didn’t affect those efforts at Fayetteville State.

“We always believe we’ve been on the map,” she said. “So as we work on our strategies and we support our students, nothing has changed in the work that we do, because we have been doing this work before any of the conversations were happening.”

Long-term growth at NC A&T

NC A&T State University in Greensboro is also able to make a strong claim that the Supreme Court’s ruling didn’t impact the interest prospective students showed in the university — largely because the university was already growing for years prior to the decision.

The university’s enrollment is up by about 3% this fall, and with more than 14,000 total students, A&T is believed to have the largest student body ever enrolled at any HBCU across the country.

“We’ve been attracting more and more student-application interest for over a decade,” Montgomery, the associate vice provost for enrollment, said. “This is our 11th year where we have broken the institution’s record, and this is our fourth-consecutive year of being the largest HBCU in the country.”

Montgomery said administrators and higher-education professionals have placed a larger emphasis on the ruling than students, who often look at him “like a deer in headlights” when he mentions the decision to them.

“I’m not certain if the student sees [the ruling] as a disadvantage or an advantage,” he said.

Instead, Montgomery said, students tell him they were attracted to apply to A&T, and subsequently enroll, because of the vast academic portfolio it offers and the professional success the university’s students see after they graduate. That’s true for undergraduate and graduate students, Montgomery said, pointing to a roughly 8% increase in the number of students pursuing master’s or doctoral degrees at the university this year.

A&T, like the UNC System’s other HBCUs, also benefits from being able to enroll more out-of-state students in its first-year classes compared other campuses after the Board of Governors increased the allowable proportion. While all campuses were previously limited to enrolling no more than 18% of first-year students from outside of North Carolina, that cap is now 25% at Fayetteville State, 35% at A&T, NC Central and Winston-Salem State, and 50% at Elizabeth City State.

The increased limit has been a major factor in A&T’s growth, Montgomery said.

“Without that it would have been very difficult for A&T to get to its current enrollment levels,” he said.

The competition to attract in-state students remains fierce, Montgomery said, because many prospective students who apply to A&T generally look not only at other HBCUs and regional universities in the state, but also the state’s flagship universities of UNC-Chapel Hill and NC State University and selective private schools like Duke University.

“It just kind of depends on the caliber of the student,” he said.

The in-state competition will likely be compounded by the demographic cliff, Montgomery said. He believes it would be beneficial for all UNC System schools to increase their out-of-state limits on enrollment to at least 25% to more evenly disperse the available students among all 16 campuses and “give some relief to some of these other regional public universities in our system.” ( UNC-Chapel Hill is considering a proposal to increase its limit from 18% to 25%, but no decision has been finalized.)

Regardless of any other schools prospective students might be eyeing, or been accepted to, Montgomery said his team tries to be clear in its message: “We want students to know that you’re not forfeiting opportunities that you would get at other institutions if you select A&T.”