Mark Schneider, the former U.S. commissioner of education statistics who now serves as vice president at the American Institutes for Research, said there's no doubt that high-tech companies need skilled workers. But he said there are challenges with leaning heavily on community colleges. Many students enter community colleges lacking math skills. The sophisticated equipment needed for training is expensive, and there's little known about the effectiveness of individual community colleges programs across the country, he said.
"We need measures of how well they are training their students, how well their students are being placed in the job market, and ... are they making money?" Schneider said. "We need to track that really, really carefully. And, we need to make all that information available to students before they sign on ... and before taxpayers subsidize all of this."
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Hefling reported from Washington
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