Enrollment at UNCA

The UNC System tells us that enrollment is the driving cause of a continuing financial crisis at UNCA; that narrative is, at best, incomplete.

Published

August 7, 2025

Disclaimer: All content written, owned, hosted, and copyright 2025, by Mark McClure. All opinions expressed herein are my own and do not reflect the opinions of my employer, The University of North Carolina Asheville.

The University of North Carolina - Asheville, where I’ve taught since 1997, has been in the midst of a serious financial crisis for nearly a decade. As a result, positions have gone unfilled, average salaries have lagged behind peer institutions, and several departments have been cut with the possible threat of further cuts pending departmental reviews.

The overarching narrative describing the reasons for these problems has focused almost exclusively on UNCA’s enrollment and how it compares to other schools in the UNC System. If we compare our enrollment to a genuine set of peers, though, a broader pattern emerges which leads to potentially more important questions.

Specifically,

UNCA’s enrollment looks much more natural when compared to its actual peers and
Public education might be looked at as a public good worthy of an investment, rather than a commodity.

Enrollment and Change in the UNC System

In December of 2022, an article appeared in the (then new) AVL Watchdog along with an alarming graphic:

Figure 1: AVL Watchdog graphic - Dec 2022

Well, yeah, that doesn’t look good! It is, indeed, true that UNCA had a fall enrollment of 3891 in 2015 and of only 2914 in 2022, which equates to a 25% decrease.

Let’s take a look at a time series graph that shows how all UNC System schools evolved over a slightly larger time interval:

make_graph(
  Array.from(grouped_data.get('System').values()), 
  'relative_enrollment'
)

Figure 2: Relative enrollment changes across the UNC System

The image illustrates the relative enrollment for each school in the UNC System. They are all normalized to have a single common unit of enrollment for Fall of 2012. The enrollments for subsequent years are plotted relative to that Fall 2012 enrollment. The dark blue line represents UNCA and we clearly see that it decreased from 2015 to 2022.

You can hover over or touch the figure to highlight specific paths and identify which schools is which in the figure. The one school that lies below UNCA even at the end is Elizabeth City State (ECSU), which is a little odd given that ECSU is the school in Figure 1 that has by far the largest relative increase. A look at the time series, though, indicates that ECSU has been through quite a ride over this decade+.

This is all, perhaps, less surprising if you realize that ECSU and UNCA are the two smallest schools in the UNC System. Thus, changes that arise from broader patterns will affect these schools disproportionately. It might be worth taking a look at actual enrollment values, in addition to relative changes.

make_graph(
  Array.from(grouped_data.get('System').values()), 
  'total_enrollment'
)

Figure 3: Enrollments across the UNC System

The first thing that strikes me in this image is how little UNCA’s enrollment change is relative to the whole system. In fact, we have fewer than 2% of the students in the system and our 2015 to 2015 enrollment decline of less than 1000 accounts for less than 1/2 of 1% of the total system enrollment.

All these differences suggest that there might be a more appropriate peer to group with which to compare ourselves.

UNCA’s peer groups

The UNC System is a diverse set of schools serving a wide range of curricula to varying student bodies, as well as performing research in all kinds of subjects. The UNC System includes

two high level research (R1) universities,
two very large regional R2 universities, one urban in Charlotte and one quite rural in Greenville,
three not quite as large R2 universities in Boone, Greensboro, and Wilmington,
five historically black schools spread throughout the state,
two Master’s level schools in (Western Carolina and UNC Pembroke),
and UNC Asheville, the UNC system’s designated liberal arts school.

These schools are all “peers” in the sense that they are all members of the UNC System of public universities. Beyond that, they are different enough that comparisons between schools within this group can be misleading. UNCA’s mission, in particular, is distinct enough that it really has no comparable peers within the system.

Each school, though, does have a list of comparable peers defined by the UNC System office that are listed in the System’s Peer Study of 2020. UNCA’s peer group (as listed in that study) consists of

St. Mary’s College of Maryland
Massachusetts College of Liberal Arts
University of Minnesota-Morris
Ramapo College of New Jersey
SUNY College at Geneseo
SUNY at Purchase College
Christopher Newport University
University of Mary Washington
The University of Virginia’s College at Wise
New College of Florida
The College of Wooster
Furman University

All of these are liberal arts schools. The first 10 are all public schools and mostly of rather high quality. The last two are very good private liberal arts schools. We might think of these as aspirational - representing what UNCA would like to be.

Conversely, many of these schools have long thought of UNCA in an aspirational sense. Most of the public schools are members of COPLAC - the Counsil of Public Liberal Arts Colleges. UNCA is a founding member of COPLAC and the office is still on UNCA’s campus. UNCA is also home to the Journal of Undergraduate Research.

Quite frankly, UNCA has long represented the best of liberal arts in a public, undergraduate setting.

Enrollment and Change Among UNCA’s Liberal Arts Peers

Let’s take a look at how UNCA’s enrollment changes look amongst its liberal arts peers; we’ll start with overall enrollment this time.

make_graph(
  Array.from(grouped_data.get('Peers').values()), 
  'total_enrollment'
)

Figure 4: Enrollments across UNCA’s liberal arts peers

UNCA hardly looks like an outlier, now. On the contrary, it’s right in the middle of the pack. Also, it looks like there might be a general trend in the downward direction among all these schools. Let’s examine relative enrollment change among these schools:

make_graph(
  Array.from(grouped_data.get('Peers').values()), 
  'relative_enrollment'
)

Figure 5: Relative enrollment change among UNCA’s liberal arts peers

Again, UNCA is right in the middle of the pack. Furthermore, every one of these schools has seen a decline in enrollment over this time period.

Makes one wonder - what’s going on with liberal arts schools and what is the appropriate response to dealing with it in the public liberal arts context?

Investment in the public good

From my perspective (and, I think, from the perspective of many who work in public education), education is best thought of as a public good, rather than as a commodity. You can find a thorough outline of the history of this viewpoint and the problems that arise when we shift away from it in the book After the Ivory Tower Falls. A few of his salient points include

While there are many antecedents (Thomas Jefferson and the University of Virginia, Horace Mann and the Common School Movement), today’s theory of education as a public good can be directly traced to the explosive growth of the country in the years following World War II.
It’s a mistake to think of this growth as arising only from scientific and technical knowledge; rather, a broadly accessible, liberal education is of crucial importance. Note that “liberal” refers to “free and open inquiry”; it is not a political term in this context.
Many issues have arisen since education has gradually moved to a more commercial model, including social and political fragmentation, growing inequality, and an erosion of public trust in education.

In the context of North Carolina, it’s worth pointing out that the maintenance of a public system of higher education is established in Article 9 of the State Constitution and Section 9 of that Article states quite specifically that

The General Assembly shall provide that the benefits of The University of North Carolina and other public institutions of higher education, as far as practicable, be extended to the people of the State free of expense.

Ultimately, it is the State Legislature’s responsibility to fund our schools properly. Whether UNCA is funded appropriately or not might be gleaned from this comparison of average faculty salaries with our peer institutions:

viewof peer_group = Inputs.radio(
  ["Peers", "System"],
  {label: "Peer group:", value: "Peers"}
)

make_graph(
  Array.from(grouped_data.get(peer_group).values()), 
  'average_instructor_salary'
)

Figure 6: Average faculty salaries at UNCA and its peers

From 2017 on, UNCA’s average has declined significantly in both peer groups.

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import {make_graph} from './components/make_graphs.js';
grouped_data = {
  let data = await FileAttachment("./data/StudentTeacherData.csv").csv({
    typed: true
  });
  // Deal with the clear error in VMI's 2013 data.
  data = data.filter((d) => !(d.Year == 2013 && d.SchoolID == 234085));

  data.forEach(function (d) {
    d.Year = d3.utcParse("%Y")(`${d.Year}`);
    d.total_enrollment = d.GraduateCnt + d.UndergraduateCnt;
    d.student_teacher_ratio = d.total_enrollment / d.TeacherCnt;
    d.student_teacher_pay_ratio =
      (100000 * d.total_enrollment) / d.SalaryOutlay;
    d.average_instructor_salary = d.SalaryOutlay / d.TeacherCnt;
  });
  data = d3.rollup(
    data,
    function (a) {
      const sorted = d3.sort(a, (o) => o.Year);
      const initial_enrollment =
        sorted[0].UndergraduateCnt + sorted[0].GraduateCnt;
      sorted.forEach(
        (d) =>
          (d.relative_enrollment =
            (d.UndergraduateCnt + d.GraduateCnt) / initial_enrollment)
      );
      return sorted;
    },
    (o) => o.Cohort,
    (o) => o.SchoolID
  );
  return data;
}