John Combest is, as usual, doing half my job for me. He links to an article in the Southeast Missourian about a proposed community college:

At this point, the focus is on identifying needed job skills and the post-secondary education required to develop such skills, superintendents said.

"Being one of the larger school districts in the area, we are very much interested in what is best for our students and also for the region," Jackson schools superintendent Dr. Ron Anderson said. "I will be interested to see what data will be generated."

This just isn’t so complicated as they’re making it sound. The skills people need in southeast Missouri are the same skills people need anywhere else. Private schools like the University of Phoenix have no trouble figuring out what people want to learn, even without the help of state studies.