Higher Education

A fund supporting tuition for students in North Carolina's Alleghany, Wilkes and Ashe counties has struggled to find participants.

More than 20 historically Black colleges have used the CARES Act to wipe out their students' outstanding tuition balances. Erasing their debt, HBCU leaders say, benefits the students, and the school.

Clinton College President Lester McCorn made the announcement last week for qualifying full-time students at the school in Rock Hill. The school had already made the commitment to slash fall tuition by 50% for its students, and offer every student a new tablet, news outlets reported.

With a few weeks remaining before the fall semester begins, five of 14 Charlotte-area colleges and universities have announced a COVID-19 vaccine requirement for student enrollment.

The pressure on trustees at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill to grant tenure to investigative journalist Nikole Hannah-Jones continued to mount Friday as a major funding partner joined the call to change her status and a sought-after chemistry professor decided not to join the faculty over the dispute.

A major University of North Carolina donor said Wednesday that he sent emails to university officials questioning the hiring of Nikole Hannah-Jones after he became concerned about how much research went into the selection of the investigative journalist, whose award-winning work on slavery he called “highly contentious and highly controversial."

Investigative journalist Nikole Hannah-Jones’ tenure application at the University of North Carolina was halted because she didn’t come from a “traditional academic-type background," and a trustee who vets the lifetime appointments wanted more time to consider her qualifications, university leaders said Thursday.

The foundation that funds the University of North Carolina professorship offered to investigative journalist Nikole Hannah-Jones is urging the university to reconsider its decision to deny her tenure.

Charlotte's Johnson & Wales is one of just a handful of North Carolina schools to announce that it will require students returning to campus in the fall to be fully vaccinated for COVID-19. Livingstone College in Salisbury, Duke University and Wake Forest University also will require the vaccination.

Full-time undergraduate enrollment in the University of North Carolina System remained virtually flat from fall 2019 to fall 2020 as COVID-19 changed students’ plans and the universities’ financial situations.