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Abstract
For several generations in the lives of North Carolina citizens, providing education, training, and retraining for the workforce has remained the foremost component in the community college mission. Industrial education centers established in the 1950s to assist adults in the transition from jobs in an agricultural economy to those in a manufacturing‐based economy were consolidated and expanded during the next three decades into a statewide system of 58 comprehensive community colleges. With a mission appropriately focused on workforce preparedness and wide popular support for their role in developing this resource, community colleges are poised to help the state retool for global competition, but they need substantial funding to adequately respond to these educational needs. Current statewide initiatives are aimed at providing timely responses to emerging economic trends through collaborative approaches that maximize the system's resources. The future for North Carolina community colleges will involve training and retraining hundreds of thousands of people in order to address a shortfall in the supply of qualified workers required by the state's globally competitive business and industry.