Dreams are ideas with infinite possibilities. Quite literally, the UNC Charlotte campus as it stands today began with a dream. With over 20,000 students and with over 900,000 square feet of new academic space, we are advancing that dream into a campus that is vibrant and bustling with new people, new structures, and new ideas. 

UNC Charlotte is one of a generation of universities founded in metropolitan areas of the States immediately after World War II in response to rising education demands generated by the war and its technology.

To serve returning veterans, North Carolina opened 14 evening college centers in communities across the state. The Charlotte Center opened Sept. 23, 1946, offering evening classes to 278 freshmen and sophomore stuents in the facilities of Charlotte’s Central High School. After three years, the state closed the centers, declaring that on-campus facilities were sufficient to meet the needs of returning veterans and recent high school graduates.

Charlotte’s education and business leaders, long aware of the area’s unmet needs for higher education, moved to have the Charlotte Center taken over by the city school district and operated as Charlotte College, offering the first two years of college courses. Later the same leaders asked Charlotte voters to approve a two-cent tax to support that college.

Charlotte College drew students from the city, Mecklenburg County and from a dozen surrounding counties. The two-cent tax was later extended to all of Mecklenburg County. Ultimately financial support for the college became a responsibility of the State of North Carolina.

As soon as Charlotte College was firmly established, efforts were launched to give it a campus of its own. With the backing of Charlotte business leaders and legislators from Mecklenburg and surrounding counties, land was acquired on the northern fringe of the city and bonds were passed to finance new facilities. In 1961 Charlotte College moved into two new buildings on what was to become a 1,000-acre campus 10 miles from downtown Charlotte.

Three years later, the North Carolina legislature approved bills making Charlotte College a four-year, state-supported college. A year later, the legislature approved bills making Charlotte College a branch of The University of North Carolina.

In the years since, UNC Charlotte has grown at a rate of about 4 percent a year, reaching its current enrollment of more than 20,000 students. Today, UNC Charlotte boasts more than 75,000 living alumni and adds 4,500 to 5,000 new alumni each year.