By Richard Sullins | richard@rantnc.com

Central Carolina Community College has been named a Military Friendly School for 2025-26, earning a Silver distinction and also being named a Military Spouse Friendly School.

Institutions earning the Military Friendly School designation were evaluated using both public data sources and responses from a proprietary survey. More than 1,800 schools of 8,800 across the country participated in the 2025-2026 survey, with 830 earning special awards for going above the standard.

Being selected to receive the Military Friendly designation reflects the hard work of military and veteran students, along with the faculty, staff, and administration that help to produce good outcomes that are found across colleges that earn the distinction. CCCC is one of only two of the state’s 58 community colleges to earn the designation for the 2025-26 school year, the other being Coastal Carolina Community College in Jacksonville.

Five of the 17 institutions in the UNC System earned recognition, including UNC-Chapel Hill, N.C. State, UNC Pembroke, UNC Greensboro, and Western Carolina University. The only private four-year college in the state to receive the designation for the coming school year was N.C. Wesleyan in Rocky Mount.

The Military Friendly designation has nothing to do with the numbers of students served. In the current school year, CCCC is serving 181 active-duty members or veterans, and another 135 who have affiliation to those who have served. Instead, its interest is in how well those students are being served, and that is what this distinction pays tribute to in how CCCC considers the needs of those 306 students, along with others who will serve the United States and choose the college in years to come.

“Central Carolina recognizes the sacrifices our military families make in service to our country, and we are committed to providing them our best possible service in return,” said CCCC President Dr. Lisa Chapman. “We value what their success means to them, to the college, and to our communities.”

“A community college is a great bridge between military life and civilian life. I feel it is important that we support and encourage all of our military affiliated students during their time here at Central Carolina Community College. This includes active duty, veterans, spouses and their children,” said CCCC Veterans Affairs Coordinator Angie Estes. “It is a privilege to work with these students every day. Getting to help guide them through their journey is the most rewarding part of my job. Receiving this distinction shows we are doing things right. It also lets those looking to find a school to attend that CCCC is definitely a place they should explore.”

Military Friendly is a rating created in 2003 to recognize excellence in the provision of services to active-duty military men and women, veterans, and their families among post-secondary colleges and universities and is today considered to be the gold standard in the assessment of those services.

The ratings are determined each year through an algorithm that makes use of key statistics publicly available from nearly 9,000 colleges and universities nationwide, input from student veterans, and responses to a data-driven survey from participating institutions.

The survey questions, methodology, criteria, and weighting were developed with the assistance of an independent research firm and an advisory council of educators and employers. It is administered for free and is open to all post-secondary schools that wish to participate.