A sweeping national study released this spring puts a striking price tag on the value of North Carolina’s private, nonprofit higher education sector: $38 billion in annual economic impact, supporting more than 154,000 jobs and generating billions in tax revenue across the state.
The report, commissioned by the National Association of Independent Colleges and Universities (NAICU) and conducted by Parker Strategy Group, draws on federal IPEDS data to quantify the fiscal footprint of private, nonprofit institutions for fiscal year 2024. In North Carolina, those figures reflect not just a collection of campuses, but a substantial economic engine woven into communities from the state’s rural counties to its largest cities.
Beyond the top-line number, the study tallies $16.1 billion in labor income earned by workers tied to the sector and $5.6 billion in total tax revenue flowing to local, state, and federal coffers. The 154,342 jobs supported statewide span direct employment — faculty, administrators, and staff — as well as indirect and induced positions created through the sector’s spending activity and its employees’ household expenditures.
Of the 69,402 individuals directly employed by North Carolina’s independent campuses and affiliated networks, 43,142 work within private, nonprofit institutions themselves. Another 26,278 are employed through the Duke University Health System, illustrating how deeply the sector’s reach extends into the state’s healthcare and clinical research infrastructure.
Dr. A. Hope Williams, president of North Carolina Independent Colleges & Universities (NCICU), said the data affirm what the sector’s leaders have long argued about its dual role as educator and economic driver.
“While our primary mission is to provide world-class education and pathways for students, these numbers emphasize our sector’s continued macroeconomic impact,” Williams said. “This report highlights that independent higher education is a rapidly growing, high-yield driver of commerce, jobs, and community infrastructure across North Carolina. Whether at small liberal arts colleges in rural communities or major research universities in urban centers, NCICU campuses anchor local economies.”
NCICU’s 36 member campuses collectively enroll roughly 84,000 students annually. Those institutions confer one in four of all bachelor’s degrees awarded in North Carolina and one in three of all professional degrees — a pipeline that the sector says feeds directly into the state’s workforce needs.
The report also touches on broader student access initiatives that have gained momentum in recent years. NC College Connect, a statewide direct-admissions program, has emerged as one mechanism for channeling students from high school into higher education. More than 23,000 North Carolina public high school seniors accepted direct admission offers through the program in its second full year of operation. The program connects eligible students — those with a weighted GPA of 2.8 or above — with participating institutions across the UNC System, the community college system, and private colleges, including NCICU members, who joined the initiative as a group for the first time this year.
On the transfer front, NCICU secured a $1.3 million grant to partner with the North Carolina Community College System on a technology-driven platform aimed at reducing credit loss for students moving from two-year to four-year institutions. The initiative uses Acadeum’s course-sharing technology to streamline transfer pathways and is backed by a coalition of national funders including the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation and the Lumina Foundation.
Together, the economic data and the student-access programs sketch a sector that frames its value in both dollar terms and degree outcomes — and that is increasingly positioning itself as indispensable to North Carolina’s long-term economic trajectory.
