"Engineers have always played a prominent role in driving innovation and creating jobs," IEEE-USA President Ron Jensen said. "We're pleased that our nation's leaders recognize this and look forward to working with the administration and Congress to strengthen America's high-tech workforce."

Obama outlined his goals Monday, outlining a push that he developed with the help of his Jobs and Competitiveness Council. That presidential commission has 26 members, including CEOs at several tech firms: Paul Otellini, the CEO of ; Ursula Burns, the CEO of Xerox; John Doerr, the venture capitalist at Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers; and Sheryl Sandberg, the chief operating officer at . The chairman of the Jobs and Competitiveness Council is Jeffrey Immelt, who is chairman and CEO of GE.

Obama said Otellini "is heading up our task force for the Jobs Council in helping to figure this out, because he understands Intel's survival depends on our ability to get a steady stream of engineers."

A report last year by the National Academy amied at drawing attention to the U.S. production of science, engineering, technology and math talent, pointed out that the U.S. graduates more visual arts and performing arts majors than engineers. It also noted that the U.S. ranks 27th among developed nations in the proportion of college students receiving undergraduate degrees in science and engineering.

Patrick Thibodeau covers SaaS and enterprise applications, outsourcing, government IT policies, data centers and IT workforce issues for Computerworld. Follow Patrick on Twitter at or subscribe to . His e-mail address is .