A commentary by Michael Lanser, president of Lakeshore Technical College​ in Wisconsin.

The need for workers with specialized skills has never been greater. Now, a new Michigan initiative is bringing together community colleges from across the state to help close the region’s worsening talent gap with the help of a valuable, often uninformed, asset: high school students.

As tuition at the nation’s four-year colleges continues to skyrocket, a national trade group representing the needs of the accounting profession has, for the first time, extended scholarship opportunities to two-year transfer students.

Students interested in pursuing a career in cybersecurity are benefitting from an increasingly popular national skills competition and development initiative that is starting to attract the attention of blue-chip technology employers.