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For most of this century, schools have been organised to prepare some students for college and others for work. In the future, most jobs and all careers will require some form of post-secondary education. New approaches are needed to meet today’s challenges. This paper stresses that all students, regardless of career goals, can benefit from a mathematics curriculum that prepares them for both work and higher education. It is suggested that a three-year high school program based on functional mathematics could provide a strong background for students entering the workforce as well as for those moving directly into post-secondary education. Typically, classroom applications are designed to serve mathematics - to offer context, to illustrate use, to motivate new concepts, or to integrate topics. In functional mathematics, the priorities are reversed. Instead of applications being introduced to help students learn a pre-defined body of knowledge, the mathematical topics are selected to prepare students to cope with common problems they will face in life and work.