United Technologies sponsored the Connecticut Pre-Engineering Program to help minority high schoolers in Hartford improve math and science skills. In Austin, Texas, local high-tech businesses assist area high schools in developing better tech courses. In San Diego, Gary Jacobs, son of Qualcomm chairman and CEO Irwin Jacobs, donated $3 million for a charter school named High Tech High. In hundreds of other communities across the nation, businesses encourage high- tech literacy through mentoring and by offering early job experience.

Why are high-tech businesses investing millions in schools? Self-interest. They are among a growing number of companies dissatisfied with high school graduates' knowledge and worried that their future workforce won't be adequately educated for the information economy.

Tired of facing shortages of qualified workers - or spending billions to train workers on the job - American high-tech businesses want to recruit engineers and other tech-ready workers at home. To do so, they need workers who are ready to meet the demands of an increasingly technology-laden workplace. If our schools can't do it alone, the logic goes, then we have to either help - or do it for them.

Walk into San Diego's High Tech High, and you just might think you've stepped into the offices of an ad agency or software company. A sinuous, blond-wood reception desk curves beneath an industrial-style ceiling with blue-painted roof trusses and exposed ductwork. Carpeting muffles the footsteps of students, who gather in groups in the expansive lobby to finish math assignments or station themselves for online research in a bullpen of 100 computer desks. An overhead conduit is open, revealing computer cables that link the building's network; students are learning to repair it. Down one hall is a CAD animation classroom, and, next door, a biotech science lab with equipment that many hospital pathology labs would love to own.