Just hours after his State of the Union address, President Bush on Wednesday visited two community colleges, where he called for a $250-million program that would provide federal grants to community colleges for job training.

In stops at Owens Community College, in Toledo, Ohio, and at Mesa Community College, in Phoenix, Mr. Bush praised two-year institutions as being flexible and accessible, but he failed to give many details of the new program he is proposing, Jobs for the 21st Century.

Administration officials could not say when more details would be available, and community-college lobbyists in Washington said that they had not been briefed on the plans. A statement from the White House said simply that the proposal would include $250-million to finance partnerships between community colleges and employers in job sectors where the demand for workers outpaces the supply.

The White House did provide more information on another proposal in the State of the Union speech, to provide bigger Pell Grants to some students. Under the plan, financially needy students who took a rigorous high-school curriculum could be eligible for an additional $1,000 in each of their first two years of college.

The program, which the Bush administration said would cover 36,000 students and cost $33-million next year, was actually authorized in the Higher Education Act of 1992, but money was never provided by Congress.

A senior administration official who briefed reporters on the condition of anonymity said that the job-training proposal had come about partly out of a sense that programs already in place had not met the demands of the changing economy.

Although it was not immediately clear how the new program might differ from existing job-training programs, or whether its budget would offset cuts the administration has already proposed for adult and vocational education, community-college officials were ecstatic over the attention.

David Baime, vice president for government relations at the American Association of Community Colleges, said he had been flooded with e-mail messages from constituents who were excited that the president mentioned the plan during his State of the Union speech on Tuesday night.

"People feel very pleased that they've been recognized this way," said Mr. Baime. "Not only recognized in terms of getting presidential attention but also recognition of what is a very real challenge for our institutions of providing something that's really needed in a time of great fiscal challenge."

But some advocates for job-training programs questioned whether the president had proposed simply to reallocate funds from existing Department of Labor programs that already help community colleges retrain displaced workers.

"We're glad he's talking about the issue," said Andy Van Kleunen, executive director of the Workforce Alliance, in Washington, "but we're concerned that this isn't really a substantial new investment."