North Carolina's higher-education governing board took a significant step last week for the benefit of the state and its college-age residents.

Friday, the UNC Board of Governors began considering a policy that would put much greater emphasis not only on enrolling students into colleges, but also on ensuring they remain in school and graduate.

University President Erskine Bowles and other top officials worry that policies that rewarded campuses for enrollment growth may have had the unintended consequence of aggressively luring men and women not prepared for college work and expectations.

Noting pursuing aggressive growth in student bodies may have meant campuses "had a lot of people who would not have been admitted under normal circumstances," Bowles added:

"Let's get what we're doing right before we add people."

As much as we encourage and support getting more high school graduates into two- and four-year institutions of higher learning, we also believe that many colleges and universities have not taken seriously enough their obligation to help ensure those students finish the educational journey on which they embarked.

Too many schools see far too many students who enter as freshman fail to come back for their sophomore year. And attrition continues, with some schools seeing fewer than half the men and women at freshman orientation picking up a degree within six years (the four-year college experience is a rarity at some schools).

At N.C. Central University, one of those schools where one out of every two students makes it to graduation, Chancellor Charlie Nelms recognized the challenge well before now, and told The Herald-Sun editorial board recently that retention will get considerable attention.

There may have been a time when colleges and universities could look with benign neglect on the success of their students. We're offering a fine education, the thinking might once have gone, and it's not our fault if students fail to apply themselves enough to take it in.

A dangerous attitude in any event, it is especially unfortunate when a four-year college degree holds the key to a decent life for most people in today's knowledge-based economy.

If schools recruit unprepared students, then do little to help them succeed, it becomes, as Bowles noted, a bad deal all around. State taxpayers have subsidized an education that didn't work out, and students may be left with a mountain of debt and little to show for it.

Retention is a problem at many schools across the country. We're glad that the UNC system has decided to make this an emphasis in the coming years.