Enrollment at public universities in North Carolina has increased again this year, setting a new record for UNC System institutions.
Collectively, 16 public universities enrolled 247,927 students, a 2.2% jump from last year. This total includes increases for transfer and graduate students, and the largest freshman class in UNC System history.
This comes at a time where first-year classes are declining nationally.
According to data from the National Student Clearinghouse, freshman enrollment dropped 5% this year compared to last fall. Public four-year institutions in particular saw the largest decrease at 8.5%.
UNC Board of Governors Meeting Materials
Even though the UNC System saw gains across its institutions this year, President Peter Hans said they aren’t immune to changing enrollment patterns.
“Nothing is guaranteed next year,” Hans said at a November Board of Governors (BOG) meeting. “Because of the demographic headwinds (and) the diminishing confidence in higher education, this is going to be an ongoing challenge.”
The “headwinds” Hans refers to include what higher education experts call an impending “enrollment cliff.” This is a prediction that in the coming years, the number of college-going students will shrink, leading to a sharp decline in enrollment nationally.
Steep enrollment declines have already impacted two of the System’s universities: UNC Asheville and UNC Greensboro.
Prior to this year, both institutions had recurring years of declining enrollment, resulting in millions of dollars in tuition losses. The universities lost so much money, their chancellors decided to cut several academic departments and majors.
“We’ve lost 2,500 students in four years — that’s a whole class,” UNCG Chancellor Franklin Gilliam said at a July BOG meeting. “Institutions must evolve, (we) can’t remain static. Given the disruption in higher education, it would be neglectful to not respond in a meaningful way.”
Increasing traditional student enrollment
This year, the UNC System launched a pilot program to increase admissions at UNC Asheville and UNC Greensboro. The NC College Connect program “simplifies” the admissions process for in-state students with a GPA of 2.8 or above, according to Vice President for Student Affairs Bethany Meighen.
To apply for the schools, students only have to provide their name, email address, what major they’d like to take, and when they’d like to start.
UNC Asheville has already seen an 8% jump in applications from students who live more than 120 miles away from the institution, said Meighen at the November BOG meeting.
The program also includes several other UNC System institutions — Elizabeth City State, Fayetteville State, UNC Pembroke, and Winston-Salem State — and the NC Community College System.
So far, students have submitted over 5,000 applications total.
UNC Board of Governors Meeting Materials
The NC College Connect pilot program is part of a multi-prong approach to increase enrollment at the UNC System.
Last year, the System launched a streamlined financial aid process called the Next NC Scholarship. It combines state funds with federal assistance like the Pell Grant into one financial aid package for students coming from households making $80,000 or less.
The $180 million program gives students at least $5,000 to attend any of the state’s public universities or $3,000 to attend one of North Carolina’s community colleges.
The initiative mimics free tuition aid programs launched by Duke University and UNC-Chapel Hill in the wake of the U.S. Supreme court’s decision to overturn affirmative action.
In announcing the program, UNC-Chapel Hill said they would “follow the Supreme Court’s decision in all respects,” meaning race will not be a factor in admissions decisions.
Like every other institution in the UNC System, UNC-Chapel Hill’s enrollment increased this year. However, the university’s percentage of Black, Latino, and American Indian students decreased.
The state’s Education Assistance Authority spent over a million dollars to raise awareness about the Next NC scholarship program. Funding for the $1.25 million campaign was appropriated by the NC General Assembly via the state’s 2021-2023 budget.
Strategies to attract nontraditional students
The UNC System is also working on its admissions process for transfer students, which make up about a third of the fall 2024 cohort. At the November meeting, BOG members discussed a potential regulation to make the transfer process easier.
The proposal includes a mandate for universities to regularly update their transfer guides and a 15-day deadline to review and notify accepted students on how their credits will transfer.
UNC Board of Governors Meeting Materials
“We lose too many students to unscrupulous universities simply because they get transfer credit evaluations back more quickly,” Senior Vice President for Academic Affairs David English said. “(If) an institution doesn’t get back to you for four, or six, or eight, or 12 weeks, you’re going to select the institution that got back to you more quickly, even if the academic quality is not the same.”
UNC Asheville Chancellor Kimberly van Noort said she would like to see the System go even further with simplifying the process for transfer students.
“Having come from a very, very transfer-friendly state, I was pretty shocked at the lack of uniformity and the lack of automation here in North Carolina,” van Noort said at the November BOG meeting. “We’ve got the common course (numbering system), but we do not have a common general education curriculum in this state and that is a major barrier.”
At the meeting, BOG members also proposed a new initiative to attract more military students – reducing tuition for active duty service members.
In North Carolina, it’s against the law for public universities to provide full tuition waivers for military students, said Eric Naisbitt, the UNC System’s associate vice president of military affairs.
“Even in instances where we can serve an underserved constituency, like military service members, or in an instance where we could help directly benefit the state’s education attainment goal – we are expressly prohibited in law from offering discounted tuition,” said Naisbitt.
Instead, military students have to receive aid through the federal Military Tuition Assistance (TA) program. However, since the program is capped at $250 per semester hour, it doesn’t cover all the tuition costs for military students.
For example, a typical full student course load is about 15 credit hours, or $3,750 in aid under the TA program. Most public universities in the state charge about $4,000 to $7,000 for in-state tuition and about $14,000 to $35,000 for out-of-state.
“Camp Lejeune’s got between 7,000 and 8,000 marines that use tuition assistance each year,” Naisbitt said. “An overwhelming majority of those marines are getting educational opportunities from an institution that is not located within the state of North Carolina.”
Brad Wrenn is the UNC System’s program manager for military and veterans education. He said that without a more competitive tuition price, North Carolina is going to continue missing out on military students.
“If you are an active duty service member and you’ve got two programs that are similar in perceived quality, but one of them you’ve got to come out of pocket for and one of them you don’t,” Wrenn said. “You’re going with the one that you don’t have to come out of pocket for every single time.”
The BOG is considering asking the NC General Assembly to allow the UNC System to offer discounted tuition to military students, permitting public universities to charge under $250 per credit hour for courses.
Moving forward, UNC System President Peter Hans said there is a “relentless need” to “simplify and streamline,” both for traditional and nontraditional students.
“Whether it’s admissions, financial aid, transfer policies,” Hans said. “We exist in a dynamic marketplace and if we stand still where we were decades ago, we’re going to lose ground … our competitors aren’t sitting still.”
WUNC partners with Open Campus on higher education coverage.
