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Friday, February 14, 2025

Power List interview: Peter Hans

UNC System President Peter Hans joined High Point University President Nido Qubein in the Power List interview, a partnership for discussions with influential leaders. The interview was edited for brevity and clarity.

Peter Hans became president of the UNC System in August 2020 after leading the N.C. Community College System for two years. He grew up in both Southport in eastern North Carolina and Henderson County in the mountains. Hans spent much of his career as a lobbyist and public relations consultant to leaders including U.S. Sens. Lauch Faircloth, Richard Burr and Elizabeth Dole. He was a three-term member of the UNC Board of Governors. He has a bachelor’s degree from UNC Chapel Hill and a master’s of Liberal Arts in Extension Studies from Harvard University.


Tell us about your responsibilities as president of the UNC System?

We have roughly a quarter million full-time equivalent students, about 80% of those are from North Carolina. The University of North Carolina is a sprawling enterprise that touches the life of every North Carolinian. We have 16 universities, the nation’s finest residential high schools in the N.C. School of Science and Math, in Durham and Morganton. We have a healthcare system, UNC Health with 19 hospitals, as well as ECU Health with seven hospitals. And we have the State Education Assistance Authority, which is the body that provides financial aid to all college students, and now the Opportunity Scholarships. Trying to say grace over all of that can be a challenge, but it’s a joyful privilege at the same time.

Does the healthcare system come under your administration?

Yes, Dr. Wesley Burks is our chancellor, if you will, for the UNC Health system. And Dr. Mike Waldrum is CEO of ECU Health.


Now presidents have a lot of power. If I understand how the system works, when a university loses its chancellor, somehow, someway, that board comes up with some names. But ultimately you make that decision as to who the chancellor will be in that institution. Is that correct?

I appoint a search committee, composed of the university’s trustees, representatives of the faculty, staff, students and the Board of Governors from the system. We interview candidates to settle on three names that are forwarded to me. And then I recommend a final list to the Board of Governors for approval. So I play a key role in that decision. But I’m not the only decision-maker.

Has the Board of Governors ever rejected your recommendation?

Well, not yet.

The tenure of university chancellors has gotten shorter. Why?

That’s right. And that’s true in private institutions as well. You know firsthand these are demanding roles. I believe the average tenure in national higher education is now between five and seven years. Happily, we’ve had many exceptions to that in the UNC System, such as Harold Martin, who was chancellor at N.C. A&T State University for nearly 15 years. And he was chancellor at Winston-Salem State before that and chief academic officer of the system. Randy Woodson, at NC State, will retire next year after 15 successful years at the helm there. So we have a number of exceptions. There’s a certain advantage of continuity and stability that allows those leaders, such as yourself, to see their vision through for that institution.

What is it that you do to guide these chancellors? You ran the community college system, and before that, you did many other things. You’re familiar with education and what it takes for a leader to survive and thrive in globally competitive times. What are some of the traits you look for that have made a successful chancellor?

You alluded to one very important trait, which is a certain amount of savvy in dealing with both internal and external stakeholders because we do receive a lot of input. And that’s often helpful. A sign of devotion. We’re a public institution. We expect public scrutiny. I would be more concerned if people weren’t offering input to suggest to me that they don’t care. And yet, I have daily confirmation they care very deeply.

That’s called complaints?

Well, we’ll call it feedback. But for chancellors to have a certain amount of savvy, to how they deal with those situations, but also internally, when you think about, supporting the faculty, the staff, engaging with students, alumni. Probably if I had to pick just one trait, it would be a certain amount of personal savvy in dealing with the many people who are going to care about your university.

So that person has to be a good communicator.

Absolutely. Sometimes you won’t be able to achieve consensus, but you try to be objective and transparent about the decisions you make and so that when we don’t have consensus, at least we can move forward.

You’ve proven that after you led the community college system and now you’re leading the university system. What are the differences between those two?

They’re both doing the Lord’s work, of course. Structurally, though, the community college system is quite decentralized. That’s a defining feature, given that there are 58 spread across the state, and most of those have satellite centers as well. They’re located within a half-hour drive of 95% of North Carolina’s population. So it’s designed to be a partnership with local and state governments.

The university system is more centralized. It’s larger in terms of its budget in reach into, not only higher education but healthcare and other realms of daily North Carolina life. You may appreciate this. It is in some ways more difficult to be president of the university because you come under enormous scrutiny that isn’t always provided to the community colleges.

I think community colleges in some ways are undervalued for the great work that they do. But the advantage of leading the universities is at least there is some alignment between what I’m responsible for. I’d like the corresponding authority to actually affect the outcome.

Wonderful things are going on at the community colleges. I’m quite the ongoing evangelist for their work and support.

Why do we have that policy that traditionally limited institutions to having 18% of first-year students being from out of state?

It was a one-size-fits-all approach. We have changed that. I suggested it to the Board of Governors and they approved changes for 10 of our institutions. So Elizabeth City State, in the Tidewater region on the Virginia border, now allows up to 50%. It varies all the way down to five schools remaining at 18%. Those are Chapel Hill, NC State, Wilmington, Charlotte and App State. Those are the schools within our system that have the most enrollment demand and are the most selective.

As such, we want the people of North Carolina who paid for this great university system to have a chance to send their sons and daughters to those schools.

How would I determine how many people graduate from these 16 institutions?

I hate to average our 16 individual campuses. We have Chapel Hill and NC State at a highly selective level. We have the access institutions, including five Historically Black Colleges and Universities, and a traditionally Native American-serving institution in UNC Pembroke. And we have the UNC School of the Arts.

This is a very diverse group within the 16 universities. The graduation rate at Chapel Hill is 95%, which is amazing. It’s very high. It’s an amazing statistic, to say the least.

How are you addressing the issue of affordability?

That’s going to be a complicated matter. It is a point of pride, the UNC System’s affordability, because so much of the questioning nationally is about the cost of higher education and student loan debt. We’ve actually driven down student loan debt quite a bit because we’ve been able to keep in-state tuition flat for nine years in a row in North Carolina. No other state in the country can make that claim.

We actually have four institutions that charge $500 a semester tuition in a program called NC Promise. That includes Pembroke, Western Carolina, Elizabeth City and Fayetteville State. And so affordability is a hallmark of ours. It’s actually enshrined in the North Carolina Constitution. We have a constitutional commitment to maintain low tuition, but also a moral obligation as well so that first-generation families have that opportunity to go to college and afford it without taking on crushing debt.

How do you keep costs low and maintain competitive pay for faculty and staff?

We’re trying to drive efficiencies in our business, and operate, so that we free up funds to pay our hardworking faculty and staff and retain that talent. That’s an ongoing challenge. But we’re very fortunate. The people of North Carolina have invested in the university, on a bipartisan basis for many years.

And retaining a level of public trust is a high priority. We want each of our institutions to thrive. The level of academic programs that they’re able to offer, the level of community engagement, the public service that they are able to provide. So certainly affordability, quality and access are very important to me as a first-generation college graduate, that we have access for all of the people of North Carolina.

What do you think about when you look out 10 years from now in higher education? What could we be doing today to ensure greater success? I say that with the understanding that something like 500 private institutions closed in the last decade.

I believe all these things are intertwined and connected. The people are questioning the value of higher education. In some cases, I think the skeptics are right to poke at the cost and the perception of cost and value.

So it’s important for higher education to demonstrate its value proposition. You’ve done that exceptionally well at High Point with the life skills that you develop for your students. We’ve tried to do so by certainly keeping the cost low, by demonstrating what we call the return on investment of degrees at UNC System institutions to actually show what that leads to in careers.

But realizing at the same time our students are not just potential workers, they’re thinkers and citizens and hopefully will leave as very thoughtful human beings.

There’s the perception that is related to higher education veering from its core mission into various political causes. We’ve made a very intentional strategy of trying to remove us from that sphere.

The university is designed to host debates, hopefully, well-informed debates on various civil debates. Not to settle those debates with statements and various political positions. We belong to all the people of North Carolina, not one group or one faction or one party.

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