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North Carolina is steeped in a rich tradition of academic excellence. The University of North Carolina (UNC) at Chapel Hill, the first public university in the nation and consistently ranked as one of the best colleges and among the top research universities in the country, is one of the University of North Carolina’s 16 campuses. The UNC system, with 183,000 students, has nationally prominent researchers in the fields of biotechnology, agricultural engineering and virtual reality. Other universities in the UNC family include North Carolina State University at Raleigh, part of Research Triangle Park, and the University of North Carolina at Greensboro, the nation’s first state-supported college for women.
The 36 private colleges and universities in the state are encompassed in North Carolina Independent Colleges and Universities (NCICU), enrolling over 75,000 students and offering 126 bachelor's or associate's degrees. Seventeen schools offer master's degree programs, two offer doctoral degrees and six offer professional degree programs. NCICU includes Wake Forest University in Winston-Salem, and Duke University in Durham, home to the Center for Interdisciplinary Engineering, Medicine and Applied Sciences (CIEMAS) complex which houses part of the Institute for Genome Sciences and Policy which is dedicated to advancing the genome revolution and addressing its implications for health and society.
The state also has a large community college network. The North Carolina Community College System is the third largest in the nation, with more than 800,000 students enrolled in its 59 institutions each year. Endeavoring to increase the number of minority community college students entering careers in biomedical research, the North Carolina Transfer Assistance in the Biomedical Sciences (NCTABS Program) annually provides 25 underrepresented minority community college students with educational and biomedical research experiences that will promote their transition between community college and baccalaureate degree programs.
North Carolina is home to over 2,000 primary and secondary public and charter schools. Sixty-nine percent of public school funding comes from the state, while local funds, mainly from property taxes and designated sales taxes, provide for about 23 percent. The state meets or exceeds national averages on many indicators and has several education initiatives in place for continued improvement and excellence. Eighty percent of high school graduates intend to attend two-year or four-year colleges or universities. The state’s official State Military Academy is the Oak Ridge Military Academy in Oak Ridge, a college preparatory school with a military component.
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