NC Central’s poor financial health won’t improve overnight. What that looks like
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- NC Central is the only UNC campus that fails the Composite Financial Index threshold.
- The university needs $11.1 million to restore its reserves-to-expenses ratio.
- NC Central's Composite Financial Index improved from 2024 to 2025 under Dixon.
North Carolina Central University, Durham’s historically Black university, is struggling financially.
It’s short on cash reserves. It needs to find a way to reliably bring in much more than it’s spending. It hasn’t cleared the financial-health bar that every other UNC System campus has.
Laurie Wilcox, the school’s chief financial officer, gave a sobering picture Wednesday of the university’s position.
“We’ve got work to do,” said Wilcox at a Board of Trustees meeting. “The magnitude of this is large. ... The realities are that [recovery is] not going to happen overnight. Unless someone wants to step up and write an $11.1 million check that is blank to the institution.”
That $11.1 million number is what’s needed to bring its reserves-to-expenses ratio up to a healthy level. And it’s just one of four benchmarks the university is behind on, according to the new financial benchmark employed by the UNC System: the Composite Financial Index.
NC Central is the only school in the system that doesn’t meet the threshold for financial health using this measure. It means that it doesn’t have enough in reserves, it’s living above its means, and it’s struggling to cover its debts.
The university’s Composite Financial Index has improved, however, between 2024 and 2025 under the new leadership of Chancellor Karrie Dixon, a renowned North Carolina HBCU rescuer. Since arriving at NC Central two years ago, Dixon has led initiatives to reduce costs, improve financial management, and grow enrollment. She insists that even more progress is on the way.
Still, the school has a long road ahead.
“It’s going to take making the tough decisions, culture change and transforming our mindset,” Dixon said on Wednesday. “... The Dixon administration is doing things differently.”
COVID funding cliff
Much of the university’s financial woes stem from a COVID funding cliff that previous leaders weren’t prepared for, according to Wilcox’s analysis of the financial numbers. She started at NC Central last year.
Though federal COVID dollars were a one-time funding source, NC Central made recurring obligations on those funds, according to Wilcox. The money ran out but the financial obligations remained.
Those recurring obligations without the revenue to back them up make it hard for NC Central to operate at a healthy surplus. But rather than just unwind all the programs federal dollars initially paid for — some of them are important to the university’s mission, Wilcox said — NC Central is looking for cuts elsewhere.
“Now, we’re trying to correct that [by] making sure we’re generating revenue streams that are recurring to cover the costs,” Wilcox said. In addition, “we’re trying to find other expenses to reduce to get back to a point where we are operating at surpluses where we need to be.”
Wilcox said that “small, stackable wins” are likely the key to NC Central’s financial recovery.
Outdated facilities and aging systems
Another financial stressor is a backlog of deferred maintenance and repair costs.
Aging systems keep breaking down — particularly HVAC, which NC Central says has experienced “critical failures.” The school is currently using four temporary chillers that cost more than $30,000 per month per building.
This year, the school absorbed $2.1 million in unplanned repair and maintenance costs, as well as increased utility costs. Wilcox specifically called out Duke Energy’s increased rates.
But ultimately, the school is exercising a new, more accountable way of analyzing its financial straits. Leaders hope that is a critical step toward improvement.
“We’re in the rough right now, but understand that we’ll come to a clearing pretty soon,” said board chair Courtney Crowder on Wednesday.
This story was originally published June 24, 2026 at 5:25 PM.
