To boost engineering enrollments, Obama said private sector companies will promote science, technology, engineering and math education, offer students incentives to finish degrees, and help universities fund their programs. The participating companies intend to double their internship hiring.

What would an extra 10,000 engineering graduates accomplish?

In 2009, the U.S. produced 126,194 engineering graduates for bachelor's and master's degrees and for Ph.D.s.; increasing that total by 10,000 would add 8%.

If the White House focus is just on engineers with bachelor's degrees, that number totaled 75,320 in 2009; an additional 10,000 would boost the number of graduates by just over 13%.

In 2009, there were 41,967 master's degrees, and 8,907 Ph.D. degrees awarded, according to the IEEE-USA, which assembled this data from an American Association of Engineering Societies study.