Governors
When Roy Cooper was sworn in on January 1, 2017, he became the 32nd governor of North Carolina to have attended Carolina. The first was William Miller, who attended UNC during the 1802 school year, left without graduating, and was elected governor in 1814. Miller's story is not unusual —many early governors left the university before graduating, a sign that possession of a college degree was not seen as a prerequisite for many professions in the nineteenth century. Twenty-one governors (including Cooper) earned degrees from the university.