Abstract:
North Carolina's fifty-eight community colleges prepare workers for jobs in existing industries and for the jobs of the future. There is a campus practically within a thirty-minute drive of every state citizen. The community college system had 158,000 students enrolled in distance learning programs in 2004, and another 800,000 students took at least one course on campus. Maurer discusses some of the more unusual course offerings, including aquaculture and marine science, aviation, court reporting and captioning, crime scene investigation, cyberscience investigation, culinary technology and hospitality, and nanotechnology.