New Brunswick Premier Shawn Graham is planning a major overhaul of the province's post-secondary education system, and has appointed a commission to travel the province and make suggestions by fall 2007.

New Brunswick's five universities are struggling with a lack of funding and too few students, while many community college programs have waiting lists of students hoping to be admitted.

At a news conference in Bathurst on Friday morning, Graham said universities and colleges must change if they are going to succeed.

"There has to be more than just a tweaking," Graham said. "We recognize that for our universities and community colleges to succeed, there's going to have to be some transformational changes brought forward to allow us to be competitive."

Graham named two veteran university administrators to the commission: Rick Miner, president of Seneca College and former vice-president of the University of New Brunswick in Saint John, and Jacques L'Ecuyer, who served as president of a similar commission in the province of Quebec.

The two plan to travel the province, meeting with parents, students and educators to hear what they want from the education system and what the government can do to make post-secondary education more appealing.

Miner says New Brunswick has no choice but to overhaul its system if it wants its economy to survive. Within three years, he says, 90 per cent of jobs in the province will require post-secondary education.

 "I'd like to hear from the basic New Brunswickers, who say, 'you know, this is important to me, I want my son or daughter or grandson or daughter to have a future in this province. And the only way they're gonna have a future in this province is if we have a robust economy, and the only way we're gonna have a robust economy is if we have a literate workforce, so this is important to me, so you guys better make some good recommendations,'" Miner said.

It's been 45 years since the province's post-secondary education system saw a major overhaul. That was the Deutsch Commission under former New Brunswick premier Louis Robichaud in 1962.