Cape Fear Community College could receive nearly $750,000 in bonus funding for targeted programs through a proposal put forward by Gov. Pat McCrory on Thursday.

The governor’s plan, Closing the Skills Gap, was announced in a news release Thursday. It would reinvest $16.8 million in savings generated by community colleges into additional funding for the state’s 58 community colleges to train workers in high-demand fields such as health sciences, engineering, construction, manufacturing, transportation, chemical and biotechnology fields. 

“This is all about putting North Carolinians in good-paying jobs as soon as possible,” McCrory said in the release. “More importantly, the decisions on how to invest the funds will be made at the local level to directly connect the training to the area economy.” 

"Cape Fear Community College strives to provide programs for our students that will help them quickly train for good jobs in our area. The Closing the Skills Gap initiative will help us to react to the changing needs of our students and area businesses," CFCC president Ted Spring said in response to McCrory’s announcement.

Each community college will decide how it will invest the money, such as updating equipment or providing salary supplements to faculty, according to the release. The decision will be based on the needs of the communities and the employers the colleges serve.  

"The great thing about community colleges is that we are ready to adapt to the needs of our service areas," Spring said. "If a specific kind of training is necessary to put people to work, we can design a program to meet that need and get it up and running in a short amount of time."

A lengthy list of target occupations was included in the release. The occupations, tied to programs at the various community colleges, provide local employment opportunities and are in growing industries that pay higher wages, the release stated. Local employment and skills demand input collected by the community colleges was correlated with data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics. 

The release also contained a table of estimated funding levels for each of the 58 community colleges. CFCC’s funding level of $749,711 was among the highest, topped only by Central Piedmont Community College, Guilford Technical Community College and Wake Technical Community College.

The funds proposed for Brunswick Community College totaled just over $97,000.

"These funds resulted from efficiency efforts within the North Carolina Community College System,” Spring said. "Now, we'll be able to reinvest those savings and train more students for careers in high-demand fields. The ability to make decisions locally about how to use these funds will help us stay on top of training needs in our community."

Another distinction of the “Closing the Skills” program, the release stated, is it will focus on jobs that do not necessarily require graduate or undergraduate degrees. The release cited recent research by the Brookings Institution found that half of the occupations in high-demand STEM fields (Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics) don’t require a four-year degree and pay an average $53,000 annual wage. This wage is higher than the average wage in nearly every county served by the state’s 58 community colleges.