As the state attracts more technology- and research-based industry, he said, the government must focus on building a tech-savvy work force.

The Winston-Salem Republican, elected as a senator in 2004, was invited to speak at the second annual Charleston Area Alumni Lecture on Southern Affairs.

He mostly described a state in flux.

"The South once built a great empire on low-skill employment," Burr said Monday during his address at UNC-Chapel Hill.

Now the South, and North Carolina in particular, must sustain itself as a center for biotechnology, top-rate universities and quality of life, he said.

The key to fulfilling this promise, Burr said, is public education.

More testing and accountability in schools, he said, will increase the number of state high school grads who go to college, a figure now at 64 percent.

The university system also must increase the number of available college slots by roughly one-third to keep up with population growth, he said.

"North Carolina and the rest of the South cannot rest on its laurels of pride with its higher education system," Burr said.

The state's research industry, he said, can continue taking advantage of contracts with the federal government and other nations. But the biotechnology sector in particular should benefit from vaccine-producing contracts. Bioterrorism preparedness programs and global pandemics have placed vaccines in demand, he said.

Burr also pushed for more public-private partnerships in the research field, citing facilities at UNC-CH, N.C. State University and in Kannapolis. These endeavors, he said, will build the promising research sector without placing too heavy a burden on taxpayers and federal funds.

The state's booming illegal immigrant population proves that the immigrants fulfill a need, Burr said, but he would like a federal verification process to vet their criminal histories and limit their stays in the United States.

Throughout this time of change, the state also must maintain its identity, Burr said. Quality of life, he said, is what draws many companies and their workers to North Carolina in the first pace.

"The same reasons many come to our state and our region are the same reasons they will stay: affordable living, a thriving job market, our universities and our taxes," Burr said.