We’re on board with the new plan for Malcolm X College.

For too long, Chicago’s city colleges have been a place of last resort, where too few emerge from the system with a degree or any sort of useful experience.

The system’s graduation numbers are dismal. It’s been an embarrassment to the city, frankly, worse than the city’s already-mediocre public education system.

But with a renewed sense of purpose and direction, the city colleges can do some real good for students in the city, and perhaps even move away from being the graduate institution of last resort.

Malcolm X seems like the perfect place to kick off the city colleges’ new plan to work with outside institutions. Positioned a stone’s throw away from the Illinois Medical District, separated only by the Eisenhower, it’ll work as an amazing farm system for the city’s hospitals.

Partnered with the programs at Rush, Northwestern and Stroger, students will get to see medical experiences across the spectrum. Working with Walgreens, they’ll get to see how things work inside America’s largest drugstore chain.

It’s like baseball, and the city colleges are a AAA team.

Sure, there will still be kids who go to the colleges just to go somewhere. They’ll get disheartened and drop out, same as they always have.

But with a clear sense of direction and a very bright light shining at the end of the tunnel, they’ll have more of a motivation to keep on moving.

We have high hopes for this. With the right support and guidance, this could be the beginning of a great renaissance for higher education in Chicago.