Promise for the future: Gov. Perdue’s education plan benefits schools and students alike.

Gov. Bev Perdue’s latest program, North Carolina Career and College Promise, marks an important step toward better career prospects for young North Carolinians. Its goal, to better prepare the state’s high school students to enter the workplace and higher education, may sound vague — but the plan provides concrete and realistic mechanisms for effecting this change.

Part of this program’s appeal is that it is not, in fact, a new program, at least not by the conventional definition. It isn’t about building more schools or hiring more administrators in a time of budgetary duress and tough choices. Instead, Perdue’s plan aims to streamline the network of public high schools, community colleges and universities already funded by the state. (A few private colleges have also signed onto the plan, but the focus is on public institutions.)

The real question about the plan is how it’s possible that it won’t require an expansion of the state’s education budget beyond the current model.

At the moment, community colleges are annually allotted funding based on the size of their enrollment the previous year. Likewise, there are already about 30,000 N.C. high school students who are enrolled in community college classes.

The Career and College Promise would simply restructure the current system to increase efficiency and eliminate waste, effectively keeping the old funding structure intact.

Moreover, the new plan would require high school students to meet certain qualifications in order to enroll in community college classes. Since there is currently no achievement threshold that must be met before enrolling, the new plan might actually decrease overall community college enrollment initially.

As the plan gains traction, enrollment may expand and costs may increase — but no immediate spending will be required in order to implement it. This could give the state the time it needs to restore necessary funding to community colleges, which are currently struggling to meet enrollment demand amid budget cuts.

Under the plan, high school students would pursue one of three tracks. One would provide technical training to high school students who hope to enter the workforce immediately after high school.

Another would allow high school juniors and seniors to earn college credit while still enrolled in high school. Perdue has brought assuredness to the sometimes dicey affair of transferring community college credits to four-year institutions by fielding support from all of the UNC system’s schools.

By enabling these students to come into college with more credits, this plan would shorten the time it takes them to complete their bachelor’s degrees. In turn, this would lessen tuition costs for the students and enable our state’s universities to accommodate more students.

The third track, called the “Cooperative Innovative High School Pathway,” would further enable high school students to work toward a high school diploma and an associate’s degree simultaneously. Its emphasis would be on first-generation college students, who might otherwise not consider higher education.

One might object that such “tracking” unnecessarily limits the academic pursuits of students who opt into the program, confining them at a relatively young age to an overly specific path. But this is a small price to pay for the increased access and structure the Career and College Promise will provide.

Moreover, the program would reduce the amount of time and money students waste taking (and paying for) courses that don’t ultimately count toward a degree. By setting clear goals for high school students, Career and College Promise would provide them with the focus they need to navigate the doldrums of today’s job market.

This is exactly the sort of policy our state needs in this fiscal climate. Not only are its goals concrete and specific, they are also realistic. Moreover, the program entails working with what the state has rather than adding to a bloated and disconnected system. Beyond simply surviving austere times, this approach ensures the state’s future prosperity by going straight to the source — its young people.