Ever since colleges and universities in the South were desegregated, the role of historically black colleges and universities has been uncertain. State governments in the 1960s and 1970s had two somewhat contradictory educational goals—strengthening the HBCUs, which had been treated unequally, and racially integrating their historically white universities.

That meant that many top students at HBCUs attended historically white schools, leaving HBCUs with academically weaker student bodies in spite of the infusion of some state funds. Today’s emphasis on racial diversity at elite schools around the nation has only put more stress on HBCUs, because good minority students are so eagerly sought after.

That is especially the case for the more demanding schools such as the North Carolina Agricultural and Technical State University (NCA&T), the only HBCU in North Carolina that has an engineering school.

Unfortunately, the difficulty of finding students for NC A & T has led to two fairly egregious excursions around North Carolina’s rules governing the institution (as well as an unrelated excursion). As Jesse Saffron points out:

  • No state university in North Carolina is supposed to admit more than 18 percent of its students from outside the state, but NC A&T has exceeded that—in 2012 it topped 31 percent out-of-state students.
  • Similarly, for the 2006-07 school year, NC A&T has forecast higher enrollment, for which it obtained state funds—but then its enrollment declined, rather than grew.

In both cases, the governing board of the University of North Carolina system gave the school a pass. It did not require NC A& T to pay a penalty (as the rules dictate) and even created a pilot project allowing a 25 percent out-of-state cap. And the school was allowed to keep the extra enrollment funding—even building the funds into its annual appropriations for the next four years. Saffron writes:

Rule by individuals who exercise broad discretionary authority, rather than rule by impartially written and objectively enforced laws, can lead to poor stewardship and even malfeasance.