Story by Adele Morris
Photos and Graphics by Anders Ljung
North Carolina’s historically Black colleges and universities (HBCUs) are facing uncertain futures as they navigate a storm of challenges, some new and some old.
Growing partisanship, years of underfunding, inter-HBCU competition and leadership conflicts with board members have driven seven of the 10 North Carolina HBCU leaders from their roles in the past three years.
Harold Martin Sr., chancellor emeritus of North Carolina Agricultural and Technical State University, said HBCUs have struggled to adapt to the changing political climate. He cited efforts to ban diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) as particularly challenging for HBCU administrators.
“That message of eradicating DEI became a real concern obviously for all of us in higher education, but now that is impacting the nation as a whole, with the election of this new president,” said Martin, who served as N.C. A&T’s chancellor for 15 years after 6 years at the helm of Winston-Salem State University. “As a consequence, we’re all trying to figure out what all this means in our ability to recruit and ensure everyone feels comfortable, included and inspired to work, study and play on our college campuses.”
Jerry Wilson, the director of policy and advocacy at the Center for Racial Equity in Education (CREED) in North Carolina, noted that two anti-DEI bills were introduced in the North Carolina General Assembly this session: Senate Bill 227 and House Bill 171.
N.C. Senate Bill 227 calls for eliminating DEI in public education, while N.C. House Bill 171 seeks to eliminate DEI initiatives in state and local government agencies and make it a criminal offense to use public funds for DEI purposes.
“The socio-political moment is a big factor in why we’re seeing the turnover, because it is very, very hard to serve the students that HBCUs serve in North Carolina well in the context where diversity, equity and inclusion are under a microscope, where equity efforts, trying to make the playing field more level and fair, are scrutinized,” Wilson said.
Beyond efforts to ban DEI, Chancellor Emeritus Martin expressed concern about the impact of the Trump administration potentially dismantling the U.S. Department of Education and leaving students unable to access federal dollars for financial aid.
He also said he worried about what an Education Department shutdown might entail for Title III-B funding, which supports minority-serving institutions. Martin said Title III-B funds are used flexibly across HBCUs to support staff, improve technology and address deferred maintenance issues.
“Those funds could very well be at risk,” he said. “That’s a huge challenge for Historically Black Colleges and Universities and would have very severe consequences in terms of the financial stability of these institutions.”
Despite Trump’s Mar. 19 executive order to shut down the ED and transfer its functions to state and local authorities, there have been no explicit actions or statements indicating an intent to eliminate Title III-B funds specifically.
Underfunding has already plagued HBCUs for decades. A 2023 federal analysis revealed that 16 of the country’s 19 historically Black land-grant universities were underfunded by their states by a total of $13 billion over three decades, from 1987 to 2020.
The study found that North Carolina had a funding gap of over $2 billion between its HBCU land grant schools and their predominantly white counterparts. Under federal law, states must provide equitable funding to historically Black land-grant universities and predominantly white land-grant universities.
David Sheppard, chief business and legal officer for the Thurgood Marshall College Fund, which advocates for federal policy change and connects students with scholarships and internships, said these numbers make it clear that states are not honoring their matching-fund obligations equally.
“The bottom line is the lack of institutional support by state governments of HBCUs in most of these states makes it difficult to manage the institutions, because you’re not working with the same amount of dollars that your comparable predominantly white institutions are getting from those same state legislatures,” he said.
North Carolina’s HBCUs face additional financial challenges, especially private institutions, as their lack of state funding means their financial stability is tied to tuition revenue. Martin said private HBCUs must balance charging a relatively reasonable tuition with maintaining sufficient funding to cover university operations and provide financial assistance to students.
As a result, private HBCUs often rely on students using federal aid and loans to pay tuition.
Public N.C. HBCUs face a different issue — their tuition rates are controlled by the University of North Carolina (UNC) System Board of Governors. Martin said for the past nine years, the board has restricted tuition increases for in-state students, leaving HBCUs — whose study body is mostly in-state — unable to increase revenue through tuition hikes.
Additionally, according to UNC System policy, the student body at UNC System schools must be 82% in-state. However, financial challenges have created exceptions.
The high school graduation rate in North Carolina has remained relatively flat, which means all 16 UNC System universities and various private institutions must compete for the same pool of high school graduates.
“Since there are so many universities competing for that relatively flat population of high school graduates in North Carolina, there’s pressure to recruit and enroll more out-of-state students to enhance your ability to continue to increase your enrollment,” Martin said. “That’s a problem for numbers and universities.”
This financial predicament led Martin to petition the UNC System president and increase N.C. A&T’s out-of-state cap from 18 to 25 percent during his tenure. As a result, N.C. A&T saw enrollment growth, better retention, a higher graduation rate, more graduates securing competitive jobs and improved graduate performance on licensure exams.
“Those additional students allowed us from out of state to create stable enrollment and then begin to strategically grow enrollment at A&T,” he said. “But it also allowed us to expand our market and brand more nationally as well.”
Now, N.C. A&T and North Carolina Central University have an out-of-state cap of 35 percent. Elizabeth City State University has an out-of-state cap of 50 percent, while Winston-Salem State University and Fayetteville State University each have a cap of 25 percent.
However, the universities still experience underfunding, which results in deferred maintenance issues, inadequate facilities and limited wireless infrastructure.
Harry Williams, president and CEO of the Thurgood Marshall College Fund, said these problems add to the burdens facing university leadership.
“I’m sure at UNC, anywhere you walk on that campus, you can have access to Wi-Fi,” he said. “You don’t even think about it from that standpoint, because it’s so natural. But some of our campuses don’t have that same level of luxury, so what that does is put the students at a disadvantage.”
Martin said underfunding diminishes the draw of HBCUs, creating a cycle of declining enrollment, lost revenue and a worsening financial standing. The cycle pushes prospective students toward institutions with more resources and financial aid.
“Unless HBCUs are doing something unique and providing competitive financial assistance and the like, the families of those students are enabling their sons and daughters to go where the resources are, to go to where they perceive they’re going to get a better educational experience,” Martin said.
Wilson, the policy and advocacy director at CREED, noted the underfunding forces HBCUs to vie against each other for resources rather than collaborating to advance the HBCU educational experience across the state.
Sheppard, the chief business and legal officer for the Thurgood Marshall College Fund, also said conflicts with boards of trustees are another reason HBCU chancellors and presidents leave their leadership roles.
He said positions on university boards are increasingly filled with political appointees who may have little experience in higher education or knowledge of the institution’s best interests. He added that board members often overstep their bounds, attempting to make management decisions that should fall under the university’s chancellor or president.
“People are being appointed to the boards of our institutions who have other agendas,” Sheppard said. “They are not focused on advancing the interests of the schools, and they have a tendency to create headache, headaches for the presidents or other administrators, so much so that they don’t want to be around anymore.”
To Wilson, HBCUs and their administrators need more support now than ever.
“These institutions would not exist if it was not absolutely critical to the people in the region where they are and in the state overall that they come into existence, and that they continue to exist as they have and in this moment where politically, we’re seeing federal policy and state policy be hostile to diversity, equity and inclusion, I think that that makes it clearer than ever that HBCUs are absolutely still necessary and are still the best bet for Black students in North Carolina,” Wilson said.
