Barber-Scotia College: Nurturing Excellence, Pride, Leadership

March 26, 2026
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| Education, HBCUs
Barber–Scotia College

 

In July 1867, missionary Luke Dorland — under the auspices of the Presbyterian Board of Missions for Freedmen — founded Scotia Seminary in Concord, NC as a parochial school that later became the HBCU, Barber-Scotia College (BSC). Its original purpose was to prepare Black female teachers and social workers.

The first historically Black female institution of higher education established after the Civil War, Scotia Seminary was intentionally modeled after Mount Holyoke Female Seminary (now Mount Holyoke College) and dubbed “The Mount Holyoke of the South.” Its mission, captured by the motto etched on Faith Hall’s cornerstone, “For Head, Hand and Heart,” emphasized total student development.

Scotia received its formal charter in 1870. The initial board of trustees was composed of Dorland, who remained the school’s president until 1885, and seven ministers. In 1871 the first campus building was completed; in that year the school enrolled seventy-five students, studying a curriculum of grammar, science, and domestic arts.

From its founding in 1867 to 1908 Scotia Seminary had enrolled 2,900 students, graduating 604 from the grammar department and 109 from the normal department. In 1908 Scotia had 19 teachers and 291 students.

The school’s name was changed in 1916 to Scotia Women’s College (SWC). In 1930, SWC merged with another female institution, Barber Memorial College, which was founded in 1896 in Anniston, AL by Margaret M. Barber as a memorial to her husband. This merger resulted in the 1932 name change to Barber–Scotia Junior College for women.

The South’s premier educational accrediting agency, Southern Association of Colleges and Secondary Schools (SACS), granted Barber-Scotia approval as a Class ‘A’ Junior College in 1934.

Barber-Scotia conferred its first bachelor’s degree in 1945 and became a four-year women’s college in 1946. On April 2, 1954, the charter of the college was amended to admit students without regard to ethnicity or gender and received SACS accreditation as such.

By the early 2000s the college was an accredited four-year liberal arts institution, continuing its historical relationship with the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.). The first quarter of the 21st century, however, proved to be exceedingly volatile for Barber-Scotia. It lost its SACS accreditation in 2004, jeopardizing the federal aid of the majority of its student population. As over 90% of the students at Barber–Scotia received some sort of federal financial aid, enrollment dropped from 600 students in 2004 to 91 students in 2005, and on-campus housing discontinued.

Still, in February 2006, a committee of the General Assembly Council of the Presbyterian Church (USA) voted to continue the denomination’s financial support for Barber–Scotia, noting that its physical facilities were “substantial and well-secured” and that the school was undertaking serious planning for the future. The college’s enrollment in 2007 was 543 students, 93% of whom were African American.

By December 2022, however, student enrollment had nose-dived, with reportedly only four students enrolled and a virtual revolving door of presidents. Perhaps a low point in recent years, school administrators have since worked to keep BSC doors open, and enrollment growing.

In the fall of 2025, the Independent Tribune revealed that 90 students were expected on August 22, the first to take classes on campus “for the first time in nearly a decade”. The following January, the North Carolina Property Tax Commission ruled that Barber–Scotia was an educational institution. The Independent Tribune’s update reported 100 students on campus.

Currently, the BSC website proudly invokes its history of flourishing during difficult times to buoy its determination to recoup future viability and proudly links to its 2022-2027 Strategic Plan for Stability and Sustainability.

The most distinguished graduate of Barber-Scotia College — educator Mary McLeod Bethune, class of 1894 — is honored on both the website and the physical campus with a hall named for her.

Other celebrated alumni include:

  • Lucy Hughes Brown (1885) — the first African-American woman physician licensed to practice in both North Carolina and South Carolina and the cofounder of a nursing school and hospital;
  • Vivian Ayers Allen — poet, playwright, and cultural activist, and mother of Debbie Allen and Phylicia Rashad; and,
  • Katie Geneva Cannon — an American Christian theologian and ethicist associated with womanist theology and Black theology, and the first African-American woman ordained in the United Presbyterian Church (USA).

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