CHARLOTTE – The man who built Bank of America came to North Carolina for its university – and he says it’s our responsibility to make sure others get the same opportunity to get a quality education at a reasonable price.

“One of the great things for North Carolina is our university system,” Hugh McColl, the former chairman and CEO of Bank of America, says in an exclusive video interview with the Higher Education Works Foundation.

“The educational challenges are intense, because the world is shrinking – we compete worldwide.  I think that this is why North Carolina is going to be successful – because of this university system,” he says.

As state legislators return to Raleigh this week for session, McColl notes that our state constitution says they must provide North Carolinians with an education for as close to free as possible.

“The things that we really need to focus on, which our forefathers thought about, is one, education needs to be affordable,” he says.

“All of us – the taxpayers, the people like me who’ve been successful from our education here – need to be plowing money back into the educational system so others can get an education at a reasonable price.”

McColl discusses how the bank, as it grew, hired thousands of graduates of our state’s public universities, who in turn pay billions of dollars in taxes to the state.

“In short, you could argue that our university graduates have built the state and made it the greatest state – which it is,” he says.