Our growth and development as an educational institution, and your growth as an industry, have not just coincidentally paralleled one another, they have, I believe, also greatly contributed to one another. Today, as we look to the future, at the start of a new millennium, you as textile leaders clearly realize, as I do, that our past no way insures our future. Of the 12 largest Fortune 100 companies in America at the start of the 1900s, only one of those companies, General Electric, is in existence today. Similarly, there are some who look at education trends and wonder what our role will be 50 years from now. Obviously, no industry in our state has been hit harder by economic changes than the textile industry.
Some people openly wonder where the textile industry fits in North Carolina's high tech economy.
Similarly, even though community colleges are a growing business and we expect 100,000 additional students in the next decade, some look at the technology landscape as it applies to training and education and wonder where we fit in. Internet-based training is here to stay and growing at a remarkable rate. In today' s technology oriented economy, two years of higher education is not enough for many of the new jobs. One of the reasons I remain optimistic about the important role of textiles in our State's economy is that last year, our community colleges sponsored 197 new and expanding industry training projects throughout the State, and of the all the different industries we supported, textiles comprised the third highest number of projects behind only metals and plastics. Some in our state assume that all textile jobs are heading south and overseas.