The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill is a 17-campus system that includes all 16 public four-year universities in the state of North Carolina as well as one public residential high school. A board of governors oversees general system policy, though each campus functions with a large degree of autonomy and is classified as a separate institution. This system of higher education has a total enrollment of over 183,000 students and awards over 75 percent of all bachelor’s degrees granted in the state of North Carolina.

The University of North Carolina was founded in 1789 in Chapel Hill. It was the first public university in the United States to award degrees and the only campus of the University of North Carolina for 136 years. In ...