The issue of education is so critical...I would say what makes our country competitive is, in my judgment, two things.  One, it's our Constitution, which creates a rule of law which people want to invest in, and two, it's what's in the heads of our children, because they are the future of the people who will staff our...increasingly complex capital stock.

We are seeing a significant erosion in the traditional premium accorded higher education in the United States and in some dimensions of the relative level of educational achievement in America. This cannot be good for the cause of improving the odds of sustaining this productivity surge.