A handful of colleges think they've found the secret to closing the gap between the types of graduates they're turning out and the types of workers employers are looking for: spiders.

Not the hairy, creepy kind, but rather artificial-intelligence spiders that crawl through search engines and read thousands of online "help wanted" ads to check on the job market in real time -- instead of two years after the fact, which is how long the federal government can take to report on labor trends.

The technology is helping colleges and universities quickly add and update academic programs so their graduates can land real-world jobs. And, at the same time, eliminate programs that leave students in debt with skills employers don't want.

So far the use of the technology is limited, but it's likely to increase as colleges and universities face growing pressure to help drive economic recovery and justify the cost of higher education.

"It's not just good enough anymore to educate a student," said Elaine Gaertner, director of the California community-college system's Economic and Workforce Development Centers of Excellence, which use spidering technology. "You have to educate him with a purpose."

That's often hard to do when a college is relying on federal labor data, which can be years out of date.

"It's like looking in the rearview mirror," said John Dorrer, a program director at Boston-based advocacy group, Jobs for the Future. "We're training people for jobs that don't exist, and not training people for jobs that do."

Employers say that's why, in a time of persistent unemployment -- only two-thirds of recent graduates were employed six months after graduation -- there are 3.6 million jobs sitting empty nationwide.

The National Association of Manufacturers estimates that 600,000 manufacturing jobs remain unfilled because companies can't find skilled applicants. And 93 percent of IT employers say they're having trouble attracting qualified employees, according to the Computing Technology Industry Association.

Yet 72 percent of educators believe they're doing a good job of preparing students for the workforce, while only 45 percent of graduates and 42 percent of employers think so, a McKinsey & Co. survey found.