Where Did the General Assembly Go to College?

U.S. politics are increasingly defined by the so-called diploma divide, with college graduates favoring Democrats and Republicans winning growing shares of voters without college degrees. 

That divide is also visible inside the North Carolina state house, an analysis by The Assembly found.

Using campaign websites, candidate questionnaires, and other public sources, The Assembly compiled the alma maters of all 170 legislators serving in the 2025-26 session. The database, included at the end of this article, reveals notable partisan differences in educational experience. Findings include:

• 79 percent of the General Assembly has at least a bachelor’s degree, compared with 37 percent of North Carolinians 25 years or older.
• The average Democratic legislator has 5.3 years of post-secondary education, while the average Republican has 3.7. 
• 96 percent of Democrats have at least a bachelor’s, and almost a third of them have a law degree. On the other hand, 67 percent of Republicans have at least a bachelor’s. Thirty-two members of the GOP, nearly a third of the delegation, have less than a bachelor’s or didn’t provide educational information—more than double the number who went to law school. 
• More than a quarter of Democrats attended a historically Black college or university. Only one Republican, the newly elected Brian Echevarria of Cabarrus County, did. 
• Of the legislators who attended a North Carolina community college, 83 percent are Republicans.

Those varied backgrounds could shape how legislators approach upcoming questions of higher ed, including changes to the funding models at both the University of North Carolina and North Carolina Community Colleges systems, decisions about new curricular programs, and diversity, equity, and inclusion and other policies shaping who attends college.

School Here, Rule Here

Most legislators in both parties attended in-state schools. Three-quarters of General Assembly members—78 percent of Democrats and 76 percent of Republicans—attended at least one North Carolina college, though they didn’t necessarily complete degrees there. 

The schools cover the breadth of North Carolina, but there is a notable concentration in the Triangle, where a third of legislators were educated. The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill is responsible for much of that impact: 16 percent of General Assembly members attended the school for at least one of their degrees.

Other state schools make a strong showing, too. More than half of the legislators went to a UNC System school, and 17 percent went to a school in the N.C. Community Colleges System.

Partisan differences turn up in school locations. Twenty-nine Democrats and 28 Republicans attended a school in the liberal-leaning Triangle. But because there are more Republicans (101) than Democrats (69), that means more than 40 percent of Democrats went to a Triangle college compared with 28 percent of Republicans.

Degrees of Polarization

The differences become starker when comparing types of degrees.

Nearly 96 percent of Democrats have at least a bachelor’s degree, and 61 percent have some kind of graduate degree. Among Republicans, those numbers fall to 67 and 29 percent, respectively. Thirty-two percent of GOP legislators have an associate’s degree, no college degree, or did not provide any educational information. 

Those differences are also visible in the types of schools lawmakers attended. (These statistics count any attendance, even if legislators didn’t graduate or transferred.)

While Republicans and Democrats attended public schools at roughly the same rates, those schools were much more likely to be community colleges among Republicans. Twenty-four of the 29 lawmakers who attended a school in the N.C. Community Colleges System are Republicans.

Democrats, meanwhile, were more likely to have attended UNC System schools and R1 universities—a classification designating doctoral universities with very high research activity. One Republican legislator attended an HBCU, while 18 Democrats did.

North Carolina Central University was the most attended HBCU with eight legislators. Five went to North Carolina A&T State University, and three to Fayetteville State University. (Some legislators went to multiple HBCUs.)

Some UNC System schools, like UNC-Charlotte and NC State, have roughly equal representation in each party. Others clearly leaned toward one side of the aisle, especially Appalachian State: eight of the university’s 10 alumni in the legislature are Republicans, including new Speaker of the House Destin Hall.

The school with the largest alumni base in the General Assembly, UNC-CH, shows a more complicated pattern. Legislators of each party are equally likely to have attended the state’s flagship campus as undergraduates. Because there are more Republicans than Democrats in the General Assembly, that means 60 percent of legislators with UNC-CH bachelor’s degrees are Republican. 

In line with Democrats’ higher proclivity for advanced degrees, though, UNC-CH graduate programs skew toward that party. Two-thirds of the 12 UNC Law School graduates are Democrats, as are three-fourths of the eight legislators with master’s, Ph.D.s, or M.D.s.

The closest thing the Republicans have to a graduate program steadily producing party legislators is Wake Forest University’s law school, which sent six graduates to the General Assembly, four of whom are Republicans, including Hall as well as Senate President Pro Tempore Phil Berger.

Extra Credit

Exploring the General Assembly’s higher ed resumes also reveals interesting tidbits about individual legislators, including:

• Joyce Waddell, a Democratic senator from Mecklenburg County, is the most decorated legislator with five degrees: a bachelor’s from South Carolina State University, master’s degrees from UNC-Charlotte, Appalachian State, and North Carolina A&T, and a Ph.D. from UNC-Greensboro.
• House Republican Neal Jackson is a close second with a bachelor’s and master’s from Pensacola Christian College in Pensacola, Fla., and two Ph.D.s, one from Luther Rice College & Seminary in Stonecrest, Ga., and one from The Master’s Seminary in Los Angeles.
• One Republican who technically doesn’t have a college degree is newly elected House member Wyatt Gable. But that’s because he’s currently a junior at East Carolina University.
• Two legislators attended colleges overseas: Democrat Ya Liu spent her undergraduate years at China’s Nankai University, and Republican Paul Scott earned an MBA from Scotland’s Heriot-Watt University.

Methodology: Information about each legislator’s degrees was compiled from public, online sources, including their campaign websites, biographies at companies or nonprofits they represent, and questionnaires published in local papers. When information was unclear or not publicly available, The Assembly contacted individual legislators. A few didn’t respond.

Legislators who attended but did not graduate from a school are included in accounting of who attended each school, but not in degree counts. We did not attempt to verify degree claims with schools.

Institutional information, including Carnegie classification, HBCU status, and location, was taken from the Integrated Postsecondary Education Data System, except for six schools not included in that system.

The Triangle is defined as the Raleigh-Durham-Cary Combined Statistical Area.

Average years of education are based on the assumption that certificate programs last for one year, associate’s degrees for two, and bachelor’s degrees for four. Graduate degrees were assumed to have spent four years at a bachelor’s, then an additional two for a master’s, four for a Ph.D. or M.D., and three for a J.D.

Correction: An earlier version of this story listed incorrect degrees for Tricia Cotham and Mike Colvin. This story has also been updated to include additional degrees for some lawmakers, and all charts have been updated to reflect those changes.