The University of North Carolina System reported record enrollment numbers overall. Year-over-year increases occurred at 15 of its 16 higher education institutions for the 2025-26 year. For the system as a whole, enrollment jumped 3.4% from the previous year.
This includes significant growth at Historically Black Colleges and Universities like Fayetteville State University and North Carolina Central University. UNC-Asheville, which was substantially affected by Tropical Storm Helene, was the only school to see a decline in enrollment, though its retention rate soared.
Experts say the upward trajectory is a combination of factors like the sheer size of the most recent graduating high school class, one lingering COVID-19-era policy and efforts to rebuild confidence in higher education across the state.
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Rodney Allred, a self-proclaimed college admissions nerd, worked as a college counselor in North Carolina high schools and early colleges for 26 years after he left his job as the Associate Director of Admissions at Pfeiffer University. He’s the founder of NC College Counseling, where he now provides college counseling services full-time since retiring last year.
Allred primarily works with NC students who want to attend NC colleges, though he frequently gets inquiries from out-of-state residents hoping to attend a university in the Old North State. He helps his students determine a goal and then develop a plan to achieve it, sometimes beginning his work with them as early as ninth grade.
While there are several aspects at play in the recent enrollment boom, there’s one critical yet simple factor to note — there’s just a lot of 18-year-olds.
A report from the Western Interstate Commission for Higher Education found that the 2025 high school graduating class would be the largest in US history. Allred called this “the cliff,” as it’s been projected that this number is the peak and will begin declining as soon as this year.
The historic graduating class aligns with the pre-recession 2007 baby boom. The country recorded 4.3 million births that year, a number that hadn’t been reached since 1957.
NC’s college enrollment growth could simply be an extension of the population boom the country experienced 18 years ago, though there are elements unique to NC that experts say are playing a role.
Building confidence boosts enrollment
UNC System’s Senior Vice President for Academic Affairs David J. English said individuals today are generally less confident in higher education — students and parents are unsure if a four-year degree is going to pay off in the long run.
But the UNC System has worked to make it “worth it” by statutorily capping fee increases at 3% per year and offering nine years of no tuition increases for in-state students, though that’s subject to change as the Board of Governors considers allowing individual institutions to raise tuition next year by no more than 3%.
A 2023 study also found that 94% of UNC System undergraduate and 91% of graduate degree programs offer a positive return on investment and nearly 90% of low-income students experience economic upward mobility after graduating.
“The legislature has been very generous in its funding to the system,” English said.
“This has allowed us to keep costs down to students, which has helped us reset the cost of higher ed in North Carolina. It is more affordable today than it was a decade ago. I think that’s number one that you see that’s been helping drive enrollment. … We can say to a prospective student, your costs are going to be low and your value is going to be high. And if you invest in yourself with a UNC System degree, it’s going to pay off for years to come.”
In addition to the system’s economic appeal, English said he believes the Board of Governors’ renewed focus on institutional neutrality is driving demand.
Institutional neutrality means that universities will not take positions on social and political issues in hopes of promoting open dialogue and free expression on campuses. Universities across the country adopted or renewed their commitment to institutional neutrality in droves last year when campus protests surged as students protested the Israel-Hamas war.
The UNC System did the same as part of its controversial policy change, “Equality Within the University of North Carolina,” which also repealed its DEI guidelines.
English said the anecdotal evidence points to students and parents desiring an environment that prioritizes the educational experience rather than being enmeshed in current events and political debate.
“Our Board of Governors and our leadership have been really focused on creating a campus environment where students from all backgrounds and perspectives are welcome,” he said.
“You look at the approach on institutional neutrality, on trying to get the universities back to our core — right back to their focused mission of discovering knowledge, disseminating knowledge, teaching students, serving the state. And I think we see that paying off, that students want to be a part of that sort of environment.”
Increasing enrollment access
NC has several initiatives that make college more attainable for students. The Career and College Promise Program allows high school students to dual-enroll in community college and local universities, which often transfer as credits to a four-year institution.
Allred encourages his students to take as much advantage of this opportunity as possible, as it can significantly decrease the amount of time students are in college, thus how much they spend.
The state is also rolling out an expansion of NC College Connect, which offers direct admission to select institutions, including more than half of the UNC System schools, for students that have a 2.8 GPA or higher. The program is meant to simplify the admissions process for local students.
The NC Promise Tuition Plan also offers reduced tuition at Western Carolina University, HBCUs Fayetteville State and Elizabeth City State, and the state’s only four-year Native American-Serving Nontribal Institution, UNC-Pembroke.
Fayetteville State saw the highest growth with a 7.3% enrollment increase. Other HBCUs, NC Agricultural and Technical State University and NC Central University, were close behind with 6.7% and 6.8% increases. The growth of the UNC System HBCUs is on par with national figures as the schools continue to see record amounts of students on campus.
The system’s figures account for the total enrollment compared to last year, not just new students, so the surge points to both new freshmen and a better retention rate.
“Fayetteville State’s new student population was up maybe three or 4%, but the returning students were up 7%,” English said.
“The number of first-year students coming back for their second year is going up. Their student success measures are going up at a faster rate than their new freshman enrollment is, so what that allows for is that the total enrollment can then grow much more rapidly, but you’re growing it because you’re doing a better job of keeping your students and then graduating your students.”
A lingering COVID-era policy
For NC’s most competitive public universities like NC State University and UNC-Chapel Hill, and other popular schools like Appalachian State University and UNC-Wilmington, Allred said he feels the test-optional policy that arose from COVID and has hung on in the years since has been the most impactful change on enrollment.
When COVID prevented students across the country from taking standardized tests like the SAT and ACT, the UNC System and other universities across the country implemented test-optional admissions so applicants could opt-out of submitting scores they weren’t satisfied with or simply didn’t have.
The policy was extended several times until the UNC Board of Governors eventually approved an official change to its policy in 2024, allowing students with a weighted GPA of 2.8 or higher to choose whether they submit standardized test scores. The policy took effect this fall.
This has opened doors for students who may have historically been kept out of competitive institutions solely because of their test scores, Allred said.
“I hope that’ll hold on for a while, because I’m seeing some really great kids who otherwise would not have been competitive at some schools that now are because they don’t have to report that test score, plus they don’t have to put in all the all the test prep time and all the energies that are related to it,” he said.
“They can focus that back into their GPA and their activities and their other things, and it takes that pressure off of it. That has absolutely been a huge driving factor in North Carolina — kids applying to more schools because they’re now competitive when they would not have been.”
Helene’s impact
UNC-Asheville was the only school in the System to see a decline in enrollment at -6.0%. With Asheville experiencing significant damage from Tropical Storm Helene last year, and in the peak of college tours and application season, English said the university didn’t have the chance to recruit prospective students in the same way as its peer institutions.
“I got my start working at admissions — 70%, probably, of what students decide, they decide in that October, November timeframe,” English said.
“That’s kind of the magic point where you do your final campus visits, you get your acceptance letters, you really start to line up in your mind where you’re going to go. And they lost the ability to show any potential freshmen or transfer students the magic there is on that campus.”
Despite challenges from Helene, UNCA’s retention rate increased from previous years. The system is in regular conversations with UNCA to determine the best path forward for growing the student body in the coming years, which partially includes the new admissions programs being implemented across the state, English said.
“We feel confident that they’ll bounce back,” he said.
“It’s a big hit. They’ll have that smaller class for some number of years, but I would be shocked if they are not in a very strong place on an enrollment basis, moving into next fall, building on all the great work they’ve done there.”
Clarification: The article has been revised to clarify that record enrollment occurred across the UNC System as a whole, but some schools saw year-over-year increases that were not individually record-breaking at those institutions.
This article first appeared on Carolina Public Press and is republished here under a Creative Commons Attribution-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.