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| A Different World: Is Hillman College a Real HBCU? Here’s What We Know. |
Netflix’s A Different World may make Hillman College feel like a place you could actually apply to, wander around between lectures and somehow end up involved in everyone else’s drama, but there is one small catch: Hillman is fictional. The new series uses the same fictional HBCU at the centre of the original 1987 sitcom, this time following Deborah Wayne and a new generation of students as they tackle college life while their parents, who were once Hillman students themselves, remain part of the story.
In the world of the series, Hillman College is an HBCU located in Hillman, Virginia. It is not a real university operating under that name today, despite the very convincing campus atmosphere presented on screen. The college functions as much more than a backdrop, giving the characters a place to grow, make mistakes, argue, find themselves and occasionally wonder why they thought college was going to be easy in the first place.
There is, however, a real institution that once carried the Hillman name. A women’s college called Hillman College existed in Chilton, Mississippi, but it closed in 1942 after being taken over by Mississippi College. That historical institution has no connection to the fictional Hillman College seen in A Different World. The shared name is therefore more coincidence than secret bit of television history.
The original A Different World also did not rely on a real university campus to create Hillman. Much of the 1987 series was produced on soundstages, with sets designed to represent the college. That approach worked for the sitcom, but Netflix’s new version takes a rather different route, bringing the fictional institution much closer to the look and feel of real Historically Black Colleges and Universities.
For the new series, production made extensive use of locations around Atlanta’s Atlanta University Center Consortium, turning several real HBCU campuses into the on-screen Hillman. The pilot, in particular, was filmed at Clark Atlanta University, while other sequences used Morehouse College, Spelman College and Morris Brown College. The production also filmed at the Interdenominational Theological Center, adding another recognisable Atlanta campus location to Hillman’s fictional geography.
That choice does a lot of heavy lifting. Rather than constructing every corner of Hillman from scratch, the series places its characters among real academic buildings, walkways and campus spaces with histories of their own. It gives the fictional college a sense of scale that would be difficult to fake entirely on a soundstage. Hillman might not exist on a university map, but its surroundings certainly do.
The production did not simply borrow impressive buildings and call it a day. The creative team reportedly wanted the new Hillman to feel like the same institution viewers knew from the original series, only several decades older and more modern. That meant retaining elements of the original layout while updating the interiors to reflect contemporary college life.
The idea is fairly clever. The exterior appearance connects the new series to Hillman’s past, while the updated interiors suggest a college that has moved forward with its students. In other words, Hillman gets a makeover without pretending it has just appeared out of nowhere. Even fictional universities apparently have to worry about renovations.
Another important part of the production was the involvement of former and current HBCU students. They worked as consultants and background performers, helping the production capture details of campus life that could easily be missed by people who have never experienced an HBCU environment themselves. Their involvement also helped the fictional Hillman feel less like a generic television college dressed up with a few banners.
That distinction matters because A Different World has always treated Hillman as more than a convenient setting. The original series used the college to explore friendships, relationships, identity, education and the experiences of young Black students. The Netflix continuation keeps that central idea while introducing characters whose lives are connected to the earlier generation.
There is also something amusing about the way the series handles Hillman’s reality. The college is entirely made up, yet much of what makes it convincing comes from very real HBCUs. So while you cannot send an application to Hillman College, you can see the real campuses that help create its television identity. Fiction does occasionally need a little help from reality.
My view is that using real HBCU campuses is one of the smartest choices the new A Different World makes. It gives Hillman a physical identity instead of making the college feel like another collection of carefully arranged television sets. More importantly, the decision respects the setting’s cultural importance without turning every shot into a glossy postcard of university life.
The mix of real locations, returning Hillman history and modern interiors gives the series room to feel contemporary while still remembering where it came from. I also like the fact that the production brought students into the process, because tiny details can make a fictional campus feel lived-in. The only slightly funny part is that Hillman has arguably received better location treatment than plenty of real universities. At least nobody can complain that the fictional students have been given a boring campus.
So, is Hillman College real? No. The university at the centre of Netflix’s A Different World is fictional, but its visual identity is heavily rooted in real HBCUs, particularly campuses across Atlanta. That blend of invention and reality is what allows Hillman to feel like somewhere students could genuinely spend four chaotic years of their lives.
And while you cannot exactly Google Hillman’s admissions office and submit an application, the real campuses behind it are very much part of the story. What do you think of Netflix using real HBCUs to bring Hillman to life — does it make the fictional college feel more convincing, or would you have preferred the series to build its own campus from scratch?