Kelly Matthews, executive vice president and economist for Wells Fargo Bank, said the state's residents historically have considered themselves "kind of weird in Utah, but we were pretty smart."

"And I think many of us are a bit of out-of-date and perhaps even in fool's paradise in terms of how our tests scores, how our graduation rates at the universities and how a lot of aspects relating to the quality of our education is, in fact, slipping," Matthews said, suggesting a "more aggressive" approach in technology education.

Lampropoulos, in part, blamed society in general.

"In this state — and again this is going to sound like blasphemy to some of you — we have an awful lot of moms and dads working and everybody trying to keep up, and the highest bankruptcy. Everybody has to have their flat screens and stuff like this. . . . I think a lot of it goes right back to the home, and are we going to invest in things or are we going to invest in our children? And I don't think parents sometimes make the right choices," he said.

He also criticized the state's applied technology colleges for too much emphasis on growing enrollment, with certain "technology" courses being "a farce."

"We've got to 'fess up to applied technology needs. They're enrolling haircutters, and we have people fixing hair and cutting meat, not fixing engines and building engines and running injection molding and doing technology types of things, which is where I want my tax dollars to go," Lampropoulos said.

"Now, I know that's kind of a cart blanche statement, . . . but I've seen a lot of that in a lot of places. It's about the number of bodies you enroll in the schools to get the funding, more so than it is to really find the kind of technology to create jobs."

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E-mail: bwallace@desnews.com