CHAPEL HILL, N.C. – William “Bill” Friday, the man who personified higher education in the state even after he stepped down after 30 years as president of the University of North Carolina system, has died in his sleep. He was 92.

Friday was just 35 years old when he was offered the position of interim president of the UNC system in 1956. He didn’t expect to stay long, telling a reporter: “I expect that I will be in this place no more than a few months.”

He served until 1986.

“Bill Friday was one of the shapers of this modern, multi-campus system,” said William Link, author of “William Friday: Power, Purpose and American Higher Education,” published in 1997. “He was the person who kind of consolidated things and built the system the way it is now.