I have recently started to believe that most people get the casualty wrong between education/training and industrial advancement. If you want more engineers, spend money in a way that creates more engineering jobs, do not simply educate engineers for jobs that do not exist. If you create the jobs, people will change college majors or teach themselves. Industries will create apprenticeship programs to compensate for the undersupply, etc. I think the U.S. already spends more than enough money to provide enough book learning to meet the demands of industry. Spending more without creating the jobs would be a waste of money. (Note I am not arguing that spending the money on the F-35 was the best use of the money, just that spending money on more education is also not a good use of money).