While leaders at North Carolina’s historically Black colleges and universities express optimism over the potential they envision for their individual campuses, they are mindful of the challenges they face.

Among North Carolina’s 11 Black colleges and universities, it’s possible to see them as a representative sample of the 105 institutions that make up the historically Black college and university community in the United States. While leaders at the state’s HBCUs express optimism over the potential they envision their individual campuses fulfilling, they are mindful of the challenges they face.

Chief among those challenges is the projected population growth in North Carolina over the next decade that has state officials planning for the 200,000-student University of North Carolina systemto accommodate an additional 80,000 students by 2017. In addition to state population growth pushing the public universities to increase capacity by nearly 50 percent in less than 10 years, officials project the state’s economy will need 400,000 new workers by 2014, according to UNC systemestimates.

“In many ways,North Carolina is a state on which to keep one’s eyes because of the population growth and the changes in demographics,” says Dr. Lucy Reuben, a higher education expert and professor of the practice of business administration at Duke University.

North Carolina HBCUs, both public and private, confront plentiful opportunities for enrollment, academic programs and research growth, provided the necessary funding and leadership are available to facilitate such opportunity. In the past two years, a majority of the HBCUs in North Carolina have welcomed new campus leaders, signaling a dramatic changing of the guard. Barber-Scotia College, Bennett College, Elizabeth City State University (ECSU), Fayetteville State University, Johnson C. Smith University, Livingstone College, North Carolina Central University (NCCU), North Carolina A&T State University and Winston-Salem State University have inaugurated new presidents and chancellors since 2006. Diverse recently spoke with several HBCU presidents and found a wide range of concerns and views, some common and some specific to their respective campuses.