What the Midterms Mean for Higher Ed in North Carolina

On Wednesday morning, North Carolina’s higher education leaders woke up to a new political reality.

Democrats seized control of the state House on Tuesday for the first time since 2010, and nearly claimed the state Senate too. Republicans clung to a single-seat majority in the upper chamber, if it survives a likely recount: Robeson County’s Danny Britt was ahead by just 268 votes.

That means many of the powerbrokers who have dominated North Carolina politics for the past 15 years are leaving, including those with an outsized impact on higher education.

Some things were going to change no matter what voters decided Tuesday, given Senate President Pro Tempore Phil Berger’s primary loss in March. Berger was the state’s most powerful politician, and he put his personal stamp on North Carolina’s colleges and universities. But now several of his closest allies and key lieutenants are gone, too.

State Sen. Michael Lee, one of the chairs of the state Senate’s Education/Higher Education Committee and previously a frontrunner to take Berger’s position as Senate leader, lost his seat to a first-time candidate. The House’s Higher Education Committee likely lost both of its chairs and its vice chair: Watauga County’s Ray Pickett and Pitt’s Timothy Reeder appeared to lose on Tuesday, while Cleveland’s Kelly Hastings fell in the primary.

In another twist of the knife, U.S. Rep. Virginia Foxx, formerly a dominant figure on the House Committee on Education and Labor, may have lost her seat as Democrats swept congressional races across the country. Foxx was trailing by 99 votes on Wednesday afternoon.

Margaret Spellings, the former president of the University of North Carolina System and secretary of education under Republican President George W. Bush, said she expects legislative action on many of the Trump administration’s education priorities will begin to recede, including stringent oversight of course content, cuts to research funding, and attacks on diversity, equity, and inclusion programs. But she stressed that Democrats’ impact will depend largely on what they choose to prioritize.

They’ll also be constrained by the executive branch, said Tom Ross, a former president of both the UNC System and Davidson College. Many far-reaching Trump policies were enacted not by Congress, but through the Department of Education and executive agencies. They launched investigations into universities, slowed research funding, and directed universities to end DEI programs. Even if Democrats don’t share those priorities, institutions will feel compelled to meet President Donald Trump’s demands.

“That’s where the primary focus is, because if you don’t follow those orders, then you’re subject to losing federal funding, and that’s not something any institution can really afford,” Ross said.

The outcome might not be Democratic-backed legislation to undo recent changes but rather a quieting of campus culture wars.

In contrast, state Democrats now have a chance to push their preferred policies, particularly in the budget.

“If I’m [Gov.] Josh Stein, I have a real opportunity,” said Spellings, who now serves as president of the Bipartisan Policy Center. “He’s going to be more secure to advance an agenda, to get it done in the legislature, to have the administrative branch be able to do some things.”

Richard Stevens, a former Republican state senator and chair of the UNC-Chapel Hill Board of Trustees, cautioned that with the Senate control still up in the air—not to mention the brewing Senate leadership fight—it’s not clear who the key decisionmakers will be yet. “A number of the key appropriators appear to be leaving,” he noted.

Both parties have fairly similar big-picture higher education funding priorities. Overall, colleges and universities have been well-funded under the Republican-controlled legislature. And state Rep. Zack Hawkins, a Durham Democrat and member of the House Committee on Higher Education, told The Assembly his three priorities were affordability and accessibility, workforce development and community colleges, and investing in student success—areas Republicans have also prioritized.

The one consistent sticking point has been sagging faculty pay, particularly at the flagships.

“If we want North Carolina to remain competitive, we have to invest in the people and institutions that make our higher education system strong,” Hawkins said. “That means identifying capital needs across the UNC System, offering competitive wages to recruit and retain talented faculty and staff, and making sure students have the academic, financial, and basic needs support to succeed.” 

There have also been imbalances in which schools receive funding, with community colleges particularly benefiting from Republican largesse. Democratic lawmakers in the last legislative session were more likely to have gone to four-year schools, so that may change. Administrators and lawmakers often quietly grumble about legislators prioritizing their alma maters and local schools.

Beyond state budgets, the most important decisions the General Assembly makes are its board appointments. Each chamber selects half of the members of the UNC System Board of Governors, a minority of each university’s Board of Trustees, 18 of 22 members for the State Board of Community Colleges, and two-thirds of each community college’s Board of Trustees. Those boards approve finances, curricular decisions, tenure and administrative appointments, and more, so each personnel decision can have long-lasting impacts. 

But board members serve staggered four-year terms. “It would be a slow process for there to be significant change,” Ross said.

Should Republicans retain control of the state Senate, Democrats will only be able to select a quarter of the UNC System Board of Governors before the 2028 election. That’s one reason Marty Kotis, a current member of the UNC-CH Board of Trustees, doesn’t expect major shifts.

“I just don’t think that the political landscape changing is going to change that much at the universities,” he said. 

Those appointments have been a source of contention. Democrats have long flagged the number of major Republican donors taking board seats and former Berger staff claiming higher education administrative jobs. If nothing else, it’s created the perception of partisanship, so much so that some liberals have fretted that Republicans might attempt to alter the appointment powers before the new General Assembly is seated in January.

“It certainly crossed my mind,” said Ross, a Democrat. “When you look at the national situation and in North Carolina, the question’s going to be, ‘What can happen in a lame-duck session?’”

Naming some Democrats to higher ed boards could allay fears that university oversight has gotten too political, said Ross.

“It takes away some of the perception that this is a political operation and the legislature is controlling the outcome,” he said. “It really takes some of that politics out of the room.”

That is the lesson Spellings takes from the election: More than anything, voters want functional, effective government.

“We’ve got to keep the main thing the main thing,” she said.