BOB COMPTON, EXECUTIVE PRODUCER, ”TWO MILLION MINUTES – A GLOBAL EXAMINATION”: Well, I’ve been a venture capital investor for the last 25 years, and I’ve invested all over the world – Europe, the U.S., Japan, China and India. And three years ago, I decided to go visit my employees, my programmers in India.

And I took them out to dinner one evening and just got to know them socially, and was just really impressed with not only how smart they are in math and science, but how globally aware they were – these are 25- to 35-year-old men and women – and how knowledgeable they were about American history, about European history, European literature.

And so, I decided to trace back where they gained that knowledge. And so, I visited colleges and high schools that they went to, and middle schools.

LAMB: This is in India.

COMPTON: This is in India. Bangalore, India.

And ultimately went to a first grade class in Bangalore, India. And five- and six-year-old Indian children, boys and girls. And I asked the teacher if I could just interrupt the class for a moment and ask each student just one question.

And the question was: what do you want to be when you grow up?

And I had my little video camera with me, and I went from child to child. And it was engineer, engineer, cardiologist, scientist, engineer, fighter pilot – five- and six-year-old kids.

And my heart just about stopped, that children at that young an age in what I had often thought as a developing nation, had set such lofty career goals.

And so, I am the father of two teenaged daughters. And I said, well, I’d like to meet some boys and girls about the same age as my children. So, we went to middle school.

And I sat down with them and asked them about what they were studying. And what I discovered was – and my daughters go to private school. They’ve been straight A’s ever since kindergarten. They’re very good students.

What I discovered was that the Indian students, who were my daughters’ peers, were two and three years ahead of my daughters in math, science, geography, world history. And it just startled me. And I became very concerned about my daughters’ ability to compete for the high wage, high growth careers of the 21st century.

So, I came back and I wrote a book about it, and I talked to a lot of friends about it. And I completely changed how we educate our own daughters …

LAMB: How?

COMPTON: Well, the first thing we did was, we hired year-round tutors in math and science and writing. I built – I hired an Indian team of mathematicians and computer programmers to build an online assessment tool that my daughters could go online and take assessment tests, where I could pinpoint – as a parent – where I could pinpoint their weaknesses in math.

For example, with my 13-year-old daughter, that system – which is called IndianMathOnline.com – that system identified that, even though she had been straight A’s, she didn’t understand prime numbers. And so, we were able to then help her – and prime numbers is a very important concept as you go to higher mathematics – we were able to help her understand prime numbers. And so, they continue to take these assessments, and we spot weaknesses and then fix them.

And then the third thing we did was, we de-emphasized athletics. Both my daughters were year-round competitive swimmers, spent anywhere from two to four hours a day in the pool, five to six days a week. We traveled all over the country for competitions.

And they don’t compete year-round anymore. They compete seasonally for the school, so they get all the benefits of the exercise, of being part of a team, but the time that was spent in the water is now spent in academics.

LAMB: What was their reaction to that?

COMPTON: Well, they – I was not a popular guy at home, initially.

LAMB: Where is home, by the way?

COMPTON: I live in Memphis, Tennessee.

But they have come to see – as they’ve watched the film, and I’m taking them, the family, to China this summer, and we’re going to visit some Chinese schools, and they’re going to meet girls the same age as them – they came to see that these are the – these, who are children today, these are the, you know, in 10 years, the people they’ll be competing against for the best careers.

And they saw how much more intensely the Indians and Chinese were studying.

LAMB: I want to show some of this, because then we can talk more about it.

COMPTON: Sure, sure.

LAMB: But this is how long, by the way?

COMPTON: It’s 54 minutes long.

LAMB: And when was it released to the public?

COMPTON: Well, it was released on my Web site in December.

LAMB: And what does it cost people to buy this?

COMPTON: It’s $25. And the Web site is www.2mminutes.com.

LAMB: And what does two million minutes mean?

COMPTON: Two million minutes is the amount of time you live during a four-year period.

And what – as I looked at the educational systems in both India and China, I believe that the four years in high school – the two million minutes in high school – are the most critical in terms of setting the student’s ability to get into higher education and really setting their trajectory for the rest of their life in terms of their careers.

LAMB: Let’s watch this. It’ll be set up, it’ll be five minutes or so, and then we can come back and talk some more about it.

COMPTON: Sure.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

NEIL AHRENDT, 18, CARMEL INDIANA: Ten years from now, I don’t know really what I’d be doing. But I think, who I’ll be as a person will – I don’t think it’s going to change much from who I am right now.

CAPTION: Neil is senior class president and a National Merit semifinalist.

NEIL AHRENDT: I could be doing a lot of different things. I guess that could be decided at college in the next four years, if I actually figure out what I want to do. I think I’ll be happy with whatever I’m doing, because I don’t think I would do something for any amount of time – I don’t think I’d have a career in something that I didn’t want to be doing.

Which means I probably won’t be working in an office type situation. I don’t think I ever want to have a cubicle – maybe for a little bit, if I can’t find anything else.

CAPTION: Carmel High School genetics lab, testing blood types.

BRITTANY BRECHBUHL, 17, CARMEL, INDIANA: I got interested in medicine, because I’m just really into helping people. And I just think you get an awesome feeling. It’s a really rewarding experience, I think, being able to save lives.

CAPTION: Brittany ranks in the top of her class – 28th of 982 seniors.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: And we can actually touch the slide. It doesn’t have to …

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: What are you looking for?

BRITTANY BRECHBUHL: We’re looking for clumping.

I’ve always liked working with people. I’m not – I’m just not the nine-to-five kind of girl. I don’t like working in confined spaces. I like to have a bunch of – I like to be very versatile with the things I do. I think I’m more hands-on, and I love helping people. I think it’d be an awesome way to kind of serve the community.

CAPTION: Twelfth grade physics lab, St. Paul’s English School.

ROHIT SRIDHARAN, 17, BANGALORE, INDIA: I mean, right now, my career is already chosen. I know what I’m going to do.

I know what engineering life is, because my sister did the same thing. And I have enough background in that, and I know I want a master’s degree, and probably even a Ph.D. degree after that.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: All of you take the data. Do the calculation individually. Nobody should say, ”I don’t know how to find the tangent,” later.

Read off your beam, take your paper, do the calculation. Why are you standing simply there?

ROHIT SRIDHARAN: Everybody in – I mean, my dad did physics, went into physics. My sister’s favorite subject was physics. And it was like, not – learning physics was easier, because when I came home, if I had a doubt, I could either go to my sister or my dad. And at the end of the day, my doubt was cured.

APOORVA UPPALA, 17, BANGALORE, INDIA: Yes, engineering is like the standard route taken by everybody right now – in India, at least, I guess. That’s the job scenario as such, that engineering is the safest.

I’d want to be happy, like professional satisfaction. I wouldn’t want to do something and get up every morning and do the same old thing. It should be interesting and challenging every day, and should intellectually stimulate you. And in everything, and maybe I’d want – at least I’d want to get rich.

HU XIAOYUAN, 17, SHANGHAI, CHINA (in Chinese, captions in English): The final year of high school here is hard and exhausting, but I take this as a challenge. I always feel that we’ll have harder times in the future.

I haven’t really set a specific goal in terms of which university I should enter, but I hope I can get into one of the top universities. And I’d like to major in biology. However, I haven’t decided the specific focus of the major yet.

JIN RUIZHANG, 17, SHANGHAI, CHINA (in Chinese, captions in English): I really don’t have very ambitious goals, because I don’t dare. I don’t want to let myself down some day for not reaching the goal. So I’ve never really set big goals, but I’m happy with my achievements.

I’d rather not think about goals. And if I succeed, I can enjoy the feeling of surprising myself. I like that kind of feeling.

CAPTION: Ruizhang is the top math student at his school. He plans to apply at Peking University’s Advanced Math program.

JIN RUIZHANG: When I entered junior high school, all of a sudden I had a lot more homework, and I worked every possible minute to finish it. Sometimes I worked through the night, sitting on the sofa until daylight.

So my secret is that I’m very focused in class. Once I’m home, if there’s homework, I’ll get it done first. And then I sit in front of my computer, spending half of my time playing video games, and the other half on computer programming.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

LAMB: So, how did you pick the students?

COMPTON: Well, first we picked the schools. And so, we started with Carmel High School, which is a suburb of Indianapolis, Indiana. Carmel is ranked in the top three percent of public high schools in the country.

It’s a very well-funded school. They have a $30 million football stadium. They have an indoor Olympic swimming pool, a 3,500-seat auditorium – a genetics lab, as you saw there.

And then we went to Bangalore and Shanghai, and looked for schools where the socioeconomic background of the parents was similar to what we saw in Carmel. So, these are all three high-performing, upper middle class schools in all three countries.

Then, once we selected the schools – because I wanted to show what the countries are aspiring to. I mean, these are the schools that you wish every school looked like these schools.

And then, once we picked the schools, we asked the administrators at each school to give us 10 to 15 students who were, first, in the top five percent of their class academically, and then secondly, were held in high regard by their peers.

And what you see in America – Neil, for example, is the student body president. He was the captain of the football team, active in the school newspaper. And so, that – and he’s academically, you know, has a very high grade point average.

So, then you go to China, the two Chinese students, the young man is number one in math in his class, so he has high academic standing, but his peers look up to him, because he is the smartest mathematician in the class.

So, what – it’s just an interesting cultural difference as to what the students look to as their leaders in their high school classrooms.

LAMB: What role did you play in the film itself?

COMPTON: Well, I was executive – well, first, I created the idea, because of what I saw in education in schools in India, China and the U.S. And then I was executive producer, which means I funded the entire film myself.

And then I hired a director, Chad Heeter, and a producer, Adam Raney, who had done documentary films for PBS ”Frontline,” and had done films in India and Brazil, so they had experience in other countries. And they had also been in Teach For America, so they had taught. And it was just a really good combination.

Ultimately, 100 people worked on the film in three continents. We had film crews in three continents.

And then I was involved in the editing of the story line, and then have been involved in promoting the film.

LAMB: What did it cost you?

COMPTON: I spent a half-a-million dollars.

LAMB: Why are you doing this?

COMPTON: What I saw, Brian, in the classrooms in both India and China made me extremely concerned for America’s economic future. And I believe that you can predict the economic future of a country by talking to the first graders or the seventh graders in schools in different countries, and listening to their aspirations.

And what I heard in the two largest countries in the world – China, 1.3 billion people, India, 1.1 billion people, the two fastest-growing economies – I heard their students from five- and six-year-olds all the way up through adults, striving for strong education in math and science, striving for engineering and mathematics and scientific degrees.

And then you also heard Rohit, the Indian boy, say, ”And of course, I’ll go on to get a master’s and then get a Ph.D.”

An interesting fact in the film is that, of all the engineering degrees awarded by American universities, 60 percent of them are awarded to foreign nationals.

Our students, our children don’t aspire to master’s and Ph.D.s in hard science and in hard mathematics. And yet, in my experience as a venture capitalist, that’s where new value is created. That’s where new products are created.

LAMB: Define ”venture capitalist.”

COMPTON: Well, what I do – well, a venture capitalist raises capital from insurance companies or banks and takes that capital, meets an individual who has a brilliant idea, forms a company, invests in that company, and then works closely with that entrepreneur to build that company into a public company.

So, Google, for example, was started by a few really brilliant young men at Stanford. They formed a company, people put capital into it, and then it grew into the company it is today.

LAMB: You were born where?

COMPTON: I was born in Washington, D.C.

LAMB: Your education?

COMPTON: I went to Anne Beers Elementary School in Washington, and then we moved up to northern Virginia. I went to James Madison High School. Undergraduate, I went to Principia College in Elsah, Illinois, which was a very small liberal arts school, so I was a liberal arts major.

I got out of school and joined IBM, and they put me through a master’s program in computer science. And I worked for IBM for a number of years, and then went to Harvard Business School.

LAMB: What year did you get out of Harvard Business School?

COMPTON: Class of ’84.

LAMB: Let’s watch some more of your documentary.

COMPTON: OK.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: By the 12th grade, only three percent of African Americans are proficient in mathematics, compared to four percent of Hispanics, 10 percent of Native Americans, 20 percent of whites, and 34 percent of Asian Americans.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Over 90 percent of middle school students are taught science by teachers with little or no training in the subject.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Out of 29 of the world’s developed countries, the United States placed 24th in mathematics.

CAPTION: Bangalore, India. Population 5.3 million.

VIVEK PAUL, FORMER CEO, WIPRO TECHNOLOGIES OF INDIA: I think American kids have a bigger challenge than Indian kids. And the reason is that, when you grow up with economic certainty, it takes a very different kind of motivational (inaudible).

So, when you grow up like I did, where my parents were both professionals, they were very smart, you know. Yet, we had no money. I mean, I had to buy second-hand textbooks.

And now, for me, that economic opportunism is a simple beacon. It makes me work hard, it makes me apply myself.

So, I actually think kids in the United States have a bigger challenge of being able to get to this point, because they have to apply themselves and rev their internal engine in a different way. And I’m not quite sure exactly how you get that uniformly, like you do with economic opportunism.

CAPTION: Shanghai, China. Population 20 million.

VIVIEN STEWART, INTERNATIONAL EDUCATION SPECIALIST, THE ASIA SOCIETY, NEW YORK: The Chinese economy is growing so rapidly, the opportunities for people who are well educated are so extraordinary compared with a generation ago.

Whereas, in the U.S., where the general population is more comfortable, there’s maybe not so much that economic drive. And we know that in high school, you know, kids are just skating by quite often. I think we don’t have the motivation throughout the society that is true in China. It doesn’t mean we don’t have it, but we don’t have it as broadly.

VIVEK WADHWA, EXECUTIVE-IN-RESIDENCE, DUKE UNIVERSITY: In Asia (ph), (inaudible) as in India and China, they’re struggling to get out of poverty. Higher education, becoming an engineer, becoming a scientist is a passport out of poverty, that you’re going to be much better off than your parents were, than your grandparents were. And you’re going to get a lot of respect in society if you study math, science and become an engineer.

That’s not the case in the USA. We have – the hunger isn’t there. The desire isn’t there. The need isn’t there.

And that’s why you’ll find that Indian and Chinese kids are a lot more motivated to get into these fields and to succeed, because they’re fighting starvation. They’re fighting hunger.

CAPTION: Breakfast, Hu family apartment, Shanghai.

MOTHER OF HU XIAOYUAN (in Chinese, captions in English): Not many parents my age got the chance to go to college. Therefore, they expect their children to obtain a higher degree. To those who have been through the Cultural Revolution, education is very important.

CAPTION: In addition to a full schedule at school, Xiaoyuan studies violin and ballet. She has applied for early admission to Yale University.

MOTHER OF HU XIAOYUAN: The one child policy is another reason we invest so much in her education. If we had two or three children, we wouldn’t have been able to invest that much.

CAPTION: Dinner, Uppala home, Bangalore.

APOORVA UPPALA: I think my parents’ idea of success would be, five years down the line, we have a very financially stable job, we’re happy with what we are doing, which – I think which comes first.

And then like maybe a good family, like they’d want us to get married by then. I’m not so sure how that would work out. But, you know, have like a nice family, good husband, kids and nice home for yourself. And that’s what.

CAPTION: Dinner, Sridharan home, Bangalore.

ROHIT SRIDHARAN: My mom’s always there, and she, like, she helped me study from – I mean, she helped me learn the alphabet. She helped me through all of my studies.

MOTHER OF ROHIT SRIDHARAN: This is an alternate for plates. We use banana leaves to eat on.

ROHIT SRIDHARAN: I mean, she used to sit next to me and read out everything, and I used to sit next to her and listen. And I used to grasp, and that was my ability. I mean, I could – once I listened, I could remember it.

CAPTION: Dinner at Neil’s home, Carmel, Indiana.

NEIL AHRENDT: A lot of what my parents see is me coming and going. I see them at dinner, like one night a week. If they get home before about five, they’ll see me leave for work. And then I’ll come home from work. And I might eat something, then I’ll get changed, and then I’ll come down here.

CAPTION: Family dinner, Brechbuhl home. Carmel, Indiana.

BRITTANY BRECHBUHL: I really like my family. I get along with them great. We have our arguments and (inaudible).

I think, because they set high expectations, I think it’s more of I don’t want to let them down. I think that’s more of a punishment than grounding me or, you know, restricting me to going out. Just disappointing them – that guilt that you have – I think that’s the reason why I strive so much for success.

MOTHER OF BRITTANY BRECHBUHL: What are you watching? Gosh, we can’t even go a day without – or a second without – watching football.

BROTHER OF BRITTANY BRECHBUHL: Mom, it’s on one day a week. What do you mean one second?

BRITTANY BRECHBUHL: I want to have a good job, and I want to be a doctor. But I also want to have a family.

FATHER OF BRITTANY BRECHBUHL: How’s calculus going? Do you have a test tomorrow?

MOTHER OF BRITTANY BRECHBUHL: What are you studying at Tyler (ph)?

BROTHER OF BRITTANY BRECHBUHL: I’m (inaudible). Just hanging out there and doing our homework.

MOTHER OF BRITTANY BRECHBUHL: Oh, I thought you said …

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Oh, I’ve heard that excuse before, ”I’m doing homework.”

(LAUGHTER)

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: I don’t care if you’re watching ”Desperate Housewives.”

(END VIDEO CLIP)

LAMB: What are you seeing so far in that?

COMPTON: Well, it’s interesting, because I spent a lot of time in the homes of Indian and Chinese families. The families are much more – much closer in those cultures. The parents are much more heavily involved in guiding – or perhaps even pushing – their children in a certain direction.

And the parents organize their lives, the home life, around supporting the child’s education in high school.

So, my programmer was telling me about his mom would – one of my programmers – would get up in the morning, at four in the morning to start brewing tea, so when she woke him at five he had hot tea, so he could study before school.

And the parents there make enormous financial sacrifices, one, to get their children into the best schools. And there are lots of private schools in India. Obviously, in China they’re government-run schools.

But in India, they make those sacrifices. And in both countries, both India and China, the way a parent shows their love for their child is, if the child shows some ability in, let’s say in physics, they will go out and hire the best tutor they can find in physics – not because the child doesn’t understand physics – because they want the child to understand even more deeply and more broadly, and to really expand their intellectual knowledge of physics.

In America, it’s just the opposite. You don’t hire a tutor unless your child is not doing well. But if your child in America shows promise in athletics – say they’re a, you know, a pitcher for a baseball team – well, you hire a pitching coach, you hire a strength coach, you send them to baseball camp.

And so, the real difference in the cultures is what the families focus on and what the families reward. And in India and China, the families focus on academic and intellectual achievement. And they put all the passion, energy and investment in that, that Americans put in athletics.

LAMB: Do you have any idea how many young people go to college in India, China and the United States on a percentage basis?

COMPTON: I don’t on a percentage basis. I can tell you the number – well, first of all, in K through 12 in the U.S., we have 53 million children in America in K through 12. In India they have 211 million in K through 12, and in China they have 200 million.

By the time you get to middle school, it’s about – or, I’m sorry, high school – it’s about the same, 17 million in the U.S., 18 million, and 16 million in China.

So …

LAMB: You’re talking about college, though.

COMPTON: That’s getting – that’s at high school. And then getting into college, we have more children in college than – the most …

LAMB: Actual children.

COMPTON: Yes, total numbers.

Their college system in India and China is not – America’s college system is the best in the world, I believe, by far, having done business and hired people out of colleges all over the world. And that will take the Chinese and Indians decades to catch up.

So, what they do is, they graduate really bright students out of high school, and then they send them to Purdue and MIT and Stanford, where they get great engineering, math and science educations. And then we don’t grant them H1B visas, so they go back to their home country and start companies there.

LAMB: And what’s an H1B visa?

COMPTON: Well, it’s the right to stay in this country and work. And after September 11th, the number of visas we allow for people coming into the United States has dropped radically, dramatically.

And in fact, if you had an Einstein in China right now, and wanted to get an H1B visa for them for 2008, you couldn’t. All the visas for 2008, or the H1B visas, were taken in 2007.

So, we let them come in on a student visa. And if you look in the math and science and engineering departments at the top schools around the country, very high percentages are foreign nationals. And then they all go back to their home country.

LAMB: What does your wife think of all this?

COMPTON: Well, she’s a Purdue grad in industrial management. And I think – I think she agrees that we need to raise our daughters’ level of math and science understanding. But she also feels strongly, as do a lot of other parents, about the, you know, kind of the well-rounded American.

And in the case of our daughters, I would say, the activities they are doing are adding well-rounded – you know, they’re taking leadership roles in – my older daughter takes a leadership role in a program for St. Jude’s Children’s Hospital, to raise money …

LAMB: There in Memphis.

COMPTON: There in Memphis, yes.

My younger daughter is also involved in that. So, we’re trying to get them into leadership roles, things that round them out as individuals.

But I would say the vast majority of Americans talk about well-roundedness and don’t really think through what is well-roundedness mean, as it applies to the careers of the 21st century.

I can tell you, spending 1,500 hours in front of a TV, which is what the average high schooler does, is not building a well-rounded student.

LAMB: In your documentary, there’s a section that talks about this. Let’s watch it.

COMPTON: OK.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

CAPTION: Saturday, 7:00 a.m., math tutoring.

APOORVA UPPALA: Yesterday, that was Saturday, I got up in the morning at 5:45, got dressed for tuitions, and then two hours in tuitions.

After that, did a bit of math and physics, and then went to breakfast with my friends. And after that, straight to school. And I think after another half an hour, we had classes for three hours after that. Without a break.

CAPTION: Five p.m., Bangalore. Rohit attends evening tutoring sessions.

Rohit spends about 12 hours each week preparing for the entrance exam for the Indian Institute of Technology, IIT.

IITs are the top technical universities in the country.

ROHIT SRIDHARAN: A lot of pressure. I mean, it’s like, my dad and mom want me to go into IIT, because it’s the best. And IIT is like, you know, 5,000 get in. And around 500,000 write the exam.

So, I mean, the probability is really less. And so, that’s a lot of pressure then. There’s always, you know, the competition. When I sit in the tuition class, they guy sitting next to me understand something that makes me want to understand a bit more than him.

VIVEK PAUL: So, the high school experience in India is simpler, because it has a very simple organizing goal, which is, you have to graduate from high school with a great (ph) grade point average. Otherwise, you’re not going to get a great job or a great graduate school program. And so, everybody kind of aligns themselves.

And the intensity of education really increases. And you might argue almost too much, because there are kids, the parents of whom I know, that actually, literally start work at 7:00 a.m. in the morning, and go all the way till 7:00 p.m. at night, just non-stop.

And so, the intensity really steps up. So, if you want to think of the purpose of high school as being, absorb as much as I can, your experience in India is vastly simpler and more intense than in the United States.

CAPTION: Xiaoyuan heads home after a nine-hour day at school.

HU XIAOYUAN (in Chinese, English captions): Basically, I’m either at school or at home. Occasionally, if there’s a special fun event in Shanghai, I will go with my friends. That’s probably all that we can do. On Christmas, I may go for karaoke with a few friends.

After all, studying is our top priority.

JIN RUIZHANG: After I get home from school, I usually play violin first, then do my homework. I try not to waste any time.

I try my best to take all of my homework seriously. But I’m kind of a perfectionist. If I fail to study something well, I’ll feel really terrible. And I’ll always feel there’s something that still needs work.

CAPTION: Xiaoyuan is preparing for an audition at Shanghai’s Conservatory of Music. A degree in music is her backup plan for college.

Xiaoyuan’s parents pay for her lessons as part of their investment in her education. Her instructor is one of China’s most renowned violinists.

BRITTANY BRECHBUHL: I’m just not the type of person that can study, you know, for 20 hours a day. I like to kick back and have fun, because I do think high school and college is a time to have fun. But it’s also a time to – you know, you’re going there because you are a student, and you are there to get good grades.

But I think you become independent and responsible. And part of growing up is realizing that, again, it’s a balance, so you have to learn how to do both.

CAPTION: Friday, 7:00 p.m. Carmel High School football game.

Carmel High School is known not only for its academics, but for its nationally ranked sports teams.

Neil is the former captain of the football team. He gave up football in his senior year to pursue other interests.

Players dedicate more than 20 hours per week in practice and games during football season.

The town recently spent $13 million to renovate the stadium and athletic facilities.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

LAMB: Neil gave up football, it said, to pursue other interests. Why?

COMPTON: Well, I think the other interests may have been his girlfriend, actually, the young lady shown in the film.

LAMB: Would that be enough for him to give up football? I mean, was he a quarterback? Or was he …

COMPTON: Yes. Well, he wasn’t a quarterback, no. He was captain of the team. But I think after three years, I think he had had enough of football. But he was also – he’s also involved in the school newspaper. He wanted to pursue – and is pursuing – a degree at Purdue in computer graphics.

LAMB: Couldn’t you have easily picked somebody in the United States, at Carmel, who is studying violin, and somebody in China who is playing soccer?

COMPTON: No, because they don’t have inter-school sports in China.

LAMB: None at all?

COMPTON: None at all.

LAMB: How about India?

COMPTON: And none in India at all.

LAMB: Do you like that idea?

COMPTON: Well, I think it – I think – they do play sports. I mean, they play, you know, like what we call physical education back when you and I were in school, and they kick the ball around. But it’s not year-round training. It’s not 12- and 13-year-olds doing weight training.

I don’t know if you saw the article in the ”New York Times” about – a front page article about the 12-year-old who had a torn ACL, had to have an operation that they normally don’t see until college or professional athletes. And a year later, he’s back in weight training, trying to get back in shape, so he can get back in sports. What’s the point of that?

I meet Indian families. I’ve had several Indian parents ask me, you know, ”Every year we read in the Bangalore news or the Mumbai paper, about two or three boys dying in America from heat stroke from two-a-day football games. Why do American parents kill their children over sports?”

LAMB: Did you ever play sports?

COMPTON: I did. Well, I got cut from the football team the first time, but I did make it …

LAMB: High school?

COMPTON: … in my senior year of high school, yes.

But we didn’t do year-round weight training. I didn’t have a speed coach. I didn’t go to football camp.

You know, we have taken sports in this country at the very youngest age – I mean, from eight, nine years old – to a level of competitiveness that was unheard of when I was growing up.

And as a result, you’re spending more and more time on athletics, something – there’s only two million minutes. Everybody has that two million minutes. And it’s how you allocate that two million minutes.

And this (ph) – at Carmel, you know, we did have students that played violin and did the other things. And you know what? They were Indian and Chinese students. And I didn’t want to make the whole film about Indian and Chinese students. So, I felt Neil and Brittany were very much representative of the high-achieving, bright leaders in high school.

LAMB: What would you credit your own success to?

COMPTON: Well, I will tell you the things I did extracurricularly. I was not a great student, but I was involved in Boy Scouts, and my parents were very involved. Both my brother and I were very involved. I went all the way through Eagle Scout, became an Explorer Scout. Through the Explorers got my pilot’s license, and then went to IBM, which had a great training program – which today doesn’t have that any more. Times have changed. You don’t have those great training programs.

And I really got inspired at Harvard Business School by Professor Bill Sahlman, who in 1984 was one of the two professors of entrepreneurship. Today they have 27 full professors of entrepreneurship.

But Bill introduced me to the whole concept of creating value and how wealth is created, and how companies are created, and how products are created – and ultimately, how jobs result from that.

And so, it was – and I have had a series of mentors along the way.

LAMB: I know this is hard, maybe impossible to answer. But how successful financially have you been?

COMPTON: I’ve been very successful.

LAMB: And where did you have your most success?

COMPTON: Well, what I have been good at is identifying talented people with a great idea, and then helping them, then capitalizing their business, and then helping them grow their company.

So, I’ve had – I’ve invested in 40 companies over the last 25 years. I’ve had a number of them go public, one of which I actually went on to run as president and chief operating officer. It is the largest orthopedic spinal company in the world.

LAMB: How long did you do that?

COMPTON: Well, I served on the board for 10 years and ran the company for three years. And then Medtronic acquired us for $3.7 billion. But we grew the company to $400 million in revenue.

And I can tell you an interesting fact in that. I had 600 sales reps around the world. My very best sales reps all had engineering, science or mathematics undergraduate degrees. And all I had to do was teach them to sell.

The ones who didn’t have the technical degrees, I had to teach them to sell, and I had to teach them and talk about biomechanics, genetic engineering, because we sold very high-tech products.

And these are the products of the 21st century. And if you don’t have that solid base of math and science, I think across every industry, it is – you’re not going to be able to perform at the highest level you could.

LAMB: This is a 54-minute documentary?

COMPTON: Yes, it is.

LAMB: Who do you want to watch this?

COMPTON: Well, I would like every parent and teenager and middle schooler in America to watch it.

Now, the Gates Foundation has seen the film and is, through their Education in ’08 program, is flying me around the country to screen in the primary states. I have met and screened part of the film for Senator Obama and for Senator McCain, and talked to them about the issue, because the Gates Foundation wants to get it on the presidential agenda, get education higher on the agenda.

Really, if you think about it, education drives our whole economy. If we have a highly educated work force and a motivated work force, and people who have high skills in technology, we can have a vibrant economy. So, strategically, it’s really our most important investment. And so, they want to get that higher on the agenda.

I’ve been working now with several governors. I’ve been working with the governor of Indiana, the lieutenant governor of Colorado, and starting to take that down into the gubernatorial level, down to the mayoral level. And ultimately, this needs to go into every community, because each community needs to think about – they need to see the film and see who their children are going to be competing against in the 21st century, and then decide for themselves.

You know, maybe we’re fine. Maybe playing a lot of football, or having a tailgater on Friday, and binge drinking in college – maybe that is salvation in the 21st century. I don’t believe it.

LAMB: Here’s three more minutes of your documentary.

COMPTON: OK.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

CAPTION: In the past decade, Indians have founded more high-tech companies in the U.S. than immigrants from Britain, China, Taiwan and Japan combined.

Nearly 60 percent of engineering Ph.D. degrees awarded annually in the U.S. are earned by foreign nationals.

NEIL AHRENDT: I work at Fazoli’s, and I’ve worked there for – I’m just going to say at a year and nine months. So, I’m one of like – I’m one of the longest-working employees there. The pay is not that great, but it’s decent. And I enjoy the people I work with, and it’s not terribly difficult work.

CAPTION: Neil works about 20 hours a week at Fazoli’s.

SHIRLEY ANN JACKSON, PHYSICIST, PRESIDENT OF RENSSELAER POLYTECHNIC INSTITUTE: We talk a lot about whether American kids work enough, devote themselves to things enough. American kids actually work a lot. What we’re really talking about is the distribution of time.

When children play sports, they dedicate a lot of time to those activities. When a teenager has a part-time job, that young person is working hard. And so, we should never forget that young people – and Americans – in fact, do work hard. So, it’s a question of distribution of activity and effort.

VIVIEN STEWART: When I talk to parents, and I talk about how much Chinese students study, how long the school year is, how many hours they study, and so on, you get a mixed response.

Some parents agree with it absolutely and, again, think we’re not asking enough of our students, and that’s doing them a disservice, because then they won’t be as prepared as they need to be.

And other people are very concerned about that. They don’t want more homework, because they either want their students to be able to work after school or participate in a range of other activities.

ROBERT FREEMAN, ECONOMIST, HARVARD UNIVERSITY: So, I think the issue is not that Americans are not so smart, or our high school education is so terrible we can’t do this work, or our college thing is so bad. It’s we’re actually pretty flexible, much more so than a lot of other countries, because the – we do it by letting the young people make the decision.

VIVEK PAUL: So, when I grew up, I went into engineering, for the very simple reason that my dad told me to. So, I wish I could say that I was more enlightened than that. But the reason why my dad told me that, is because he felt that the best economic outlook for me was as an engineer versus in any of the other sciences.

VIVEK WADHWA: Bill Gates is more respected in Indian schools than he is in American schools today. I mean, the fact is that Indian kids look up to the tech entrepreneurs in the USA, and they’re the heroes.

I mean, I’ll tell you, when I was – I run two technology companies – when I used to go back as a tech executive, I was treated like a movie star in India, simply because I was a high-tech executive who had succeeded in the USA.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

LAMB: Why did he come to the USA?

COMPTON: He came for economic opportunity. Still today, what America does better than any other country in the world is the ability to have an entrepreneur with an idea, raise capital, form a company, build a company, grow it rapidly. We have very liquid capital markets. We have venture capital. We have a culture that supports risk-taking.

And so, that’s why, you know, 40 percent of all of the Silicon Valley venture-backed companies are started by Indians. Well, they come over here. They get a graduate degree, you know, a master’s degree, a Ph.D. degree, and then they start their companies here, and because you can form a company here quickly.

In India the capital markets, and in China the capital markets are very much in their infancy. But they are working hard to – there are incubators now all over India, incubator – business incubators – all over China, business incubators in Vietnam.

I visited a business incubator in Ho Chi Minh City, the former Saigon, that rivaled any business incubator I have seen anywhere in the Midwest.

LAMB: Define ”incubator.”

COMPTON: It’s where entrepreneurs come together, and other resources are brought in to help them take their idea, form it into a product or service, write a business plan, get financing, start the company and then grow the company.

And Vietnam is communist. I mean, I was sitting in this room with these software engineers, talking about their business. They were talking about stock options, IPOs, et cetera.

And I said, ”Wait a second, guys. Aren’t you all communists?”

And they said, ”Ah, no. Just the government is communist. We’re capitalists.”

And so, they are moving very aggressively to build the support structure to create new businesses. And Tim Draper, who is in the film, he’s a top venture capitalist from the Silicon Valley. He was a classmate of mine at Harvard Business School. He’s moved $400 million to Bangalore to fund businesses, $200 million to Shanghai to fund businesses.

They are – the money is moving to where the brains are. And where the brains are, are where the companies are going to get started, and that’s where they’re going to grow.

Do you know the reason that Microsoft is in Redmond, Washington? Because that’s where Bill Gates’ parents lived. And he moved back home, and that’s where he started the company. There’s no other reason for it to be there.

So, the next Bill Gates, who is going to be in Mumbai, that’s where the company’s going to get started. That’s where all the wealth is going to be created. And that has serious implications for our economy.

LAMB: When you sat down with Senator Obama and Senator McCain – and I must ask you, why not Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton?

COMPTON: I have not been able to get access.

LAMB: Is there a solution from the government’s standpoint for this problem you see?

COMPTON: The answer is, there is a multi-tiered solution.

Senator Obama and Senator McCain understand we have a serious, strategic issue with our education. And it’s not just the schools. It’s parents, it’s what the community rewards, it’s our cultural norms.

But what we need at the presidential level is inspiration and leadership. But then, it’s got to filter down all the way to the community level, and each community has to make its own decision.

So, I think, my worry is that the next administration, either direction, is going to want to put in one more federal program. And I don’t believe that is the way to solve the issue. It’s got to start with the parents – and the students, and the community.

LAMB: Near the end of your documentary, you tell us what happens to each one of these kids.

COMPTON: Yes.

LAMB: One of the things that I noticed – and you’ll see it in just a moment – that one of the Chinese students wanted to go to Yale. She didn’t get it.

COMPTON: Right.

LAMB: And the two students from Carmel, Indiana, at the Carmel High School, got exactly what they wanted.

COMPTON: They got their first choices, yes.

LAMB: OK. Well, we’ll watch this, and then I want to ask you what, then, what’s the message.

BOB: OK.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

VIVEK WADHWA: Unless the U.S. wakes up and realizes the new threat, realizes the fact that we’re competing with anyone, anywhere in the world, we’re going to lose. We’re not going to be the leaders in the next 30 years or so, unless we wake up and realize that.

SHIRLEY ANN JACKSON: And it takes decades to create a high performing scientist or engineer. Because these things unfold over time, people tend to overlook them. It is a crisis, because by the time one recognizes what has happened, it takes time to remedy the situation.

RICHARD FREEMAN: I think the key thing is not to get into a game where we say, China is graduating 600,000 engineers. We’re only graduating 60,000. Oh, my goodness. We’re going to lose our comparative advantage, we will lose our competitive edge.

That’s not the case. It depends upon how good our 60,000 people are, how well the industries make use of them. And it also depends how quickly, of course, the wages in China and India and other countries come up for these people. And they will be rising fairly rapidly for good people in those countries.

VIVEK PAUL: So, if you think that what America does really well is creating opportunity, that ultimate economic mobility creates great motivation for people to want to apply themselves – those that do want to apply themselves – and get results and rewards.

So, I think that that economic mobility, that open environment – socially, culturally, economically – is very important.

I think – and it’s not – it doesn’t exist that much in other parts of the world. Still today, this is the land of opportunity.

ROBERT REICH, FORMER U.S. SECRETARY OF LABOR: And the question is, can Americans continue to add substantial value to an integrated world economy, so that the incomes of Americans continue to rise? And not just the incomes of the top 20 or 30 percent, who get the best education. But I’m talking about the incomes of most Americans.

That’s the goal here. It’s not to be number one, necessarily, in everything. It’s not to knock the Chinese and the Indians down. It’s to be part of an increasingly, hopefully, more valuable set of human minds doing more and more complicated and more productive things.

CAPTION: Ruizhang is pursuing a general study program at China’s top school, Peking University. Despite his obvious gifts for mathematics, Ruizhang’s ability was not sufficient to enter their Advance Math Program.

Xiaoyuan was not accepted to Yale University. She’s studying finance at Tsinghua University – known as China’s MIT – and continues to practice violin.

Apoorva was not accepted into the university of her choice. She is studying computer engineering at a college near home.

Rohit did not get into IIT, but is studying at one of the top engineering schools in Bangalore.

Each year, hundreds of thousands of Indian students take the IIT entrance exam. Only the highest scores are sufficient to gain entry into what Bill Gates has called the finest engineering school in the world.

Brittany graduated from Carmel High School with a 3.94 GPA. She’s attending Indiana University, and pursuing majors in pre-med and Spanish.

Neil was awarded a full academic scholarship to Purdue University and is studying computer graphics.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

LAMB: Is that what – I kept thinking, the kids at Carmel got what they wanted, and they got to play at the same time. And the young people over in India and China did not get what they wanted. And I’m not sure they wanted to play anymore, but explain, what was your point?

COMPTON: Well, there are actually a number of nuanced points in that last segment.

First of all, Neil – the American boy – was accepted to Purdue on a full-ride scholarship in his junior year, based on his PSAT scores. And so, he didn’t apply anywhere else.

Now, if he were in India, his father and mother would have said, OK, you’ve got your safety school. Now, let’s apply to Carnegie Mellon, let’s apply to MIT, let’s apply to Cal Poly. Let’s apply to IIT in India. Let’s shoot for the top.

You remember earlier – in the earlier clips, every one of the Indian and Chinese parents, the kid said, you know, my parents want me to get into the best schools possible – IIT. They want me to get into, you know, Peking – the Beijing Advanced Math Program.

The Indian and Chinese children shoot very high, and they fell short. But they shot high. And so, as a result, I believe, they lifted their intellectual horsepower and capacity much higher than if they had aimed low.

And not that Purdue is – Purdue is a wonderful engineering school. But if you got into Purdue, why not try MIT? You know, why not shoot for something even higher?

And so, that’s one nuance point. It’s …

LAMB: Let me just stop you right there. You went to Principia.

COMPTON: Yes.

LAMB: A small liberal arts school.

COMPTON: Right.

LAMB: You did go to Harvard Business School, but you succeeded before you went to Harvard Business School, if I correctly read this.

COMPTON: Well, I went to work for IBM, yes.

LAMB: Yes, I mean, but you did OK without going to the very best school in the United States.

COMPTON: Yes, well, and that’s true. But that was more than 25 years ago.

The Chinese, 25 or 30 years ago, as you know, were in the middle of the Cultural Revolution. Forty million people were being slaughtered out in the fields. They weren’t competing in the international economy.

India under Gandhi and Nehru had turned totally insular, wanted to be self-sufficient. They weren’t competing in the international economy.

My children are going to face much more competition – and I’m not even talking about Eastern Europe and all the people that are now free there to compete. We’ve got three billion new capitalists that have come into this economy since I was coming out of high school and college.

LAMB: Around the world.

COMPTON: Around the world. Yes, exactly.

And so – and they are hungry, and they are studying hard, and they want to be successful.

The other point, the subtle point about that clip that I wanted to mention is, as gifted as – and you don’t see it in detail, but the Chinese boy won all kinds of math competitions. I mean, he’s a brilliant mathematician. And as brilliant as he was, he didn’t get accepted into the top math.

So what does that tell you? Thousands of other Chinese were even smarter than him.

Rohit, as smart as he was, didn’t get into IIT. Thousands more were smarter than him.

So, you know, a lot of people walk out of my film saying, well, the Americans got the schools of their choice, and the Indians worked really hard and they didn’t get the schools of their choice.

I walk out and say, the Americans aimed low, in my opinion, and they hit their target. The Indians and Chinese aimed high, fell a little bit short – because there were so many other smarter people – but still hit higher than if they had aimed lower.

LAMB: What do the educators – I know that’s a big statement – what do educators think of this?

COMPTON: Well, teachers – my biggest customers for the DVD are high school and middle school teachers. They are ordering at just a tremendous pace, and they are taking this into their classroom. And they are showing their students who they’re going to be competing against for the high-wage careers of the 21st century, and they’re using it as a global awareness dialogue.

I will tell you, the colleges of education have not been very receptive.

I screened at Harvard, and that was a – they feel that the American education system is best, that we teach, educate everybody, that we don’t have anything to learn from Third World education systems.

And yet, I established at the beginning of my presentation with them, that none of them had been in the Indian or Chinese school system, so they had – they were completely ignorant. But undaunted by ignorance, they had very strong opinions that we were far and away the best educational system.

LAMB: You told us earlier, you spent a half-a-million of your own dollars on this.

COMPTON: Yes, sir.

LAMB: Do you expect to get that money back?

COMPTON: Well, I didn’t. But to be honest, the DVDs are selling at a phenomenal pace. So, I think I may recoup most of my money.

LAMB: And if somebody wants this DVD, again, how do they get it?

COMPTON: They go to the Web site, www.2mminutes.com, and they can order it there.

LAMB: How much?

COMPTON: Twenty-five dollars.

LAMB: Do you get any cut rates if you buy a bunch?

COMPTON: We can talk a deal.

(LAUGHTER)

LAMB: And two million minutes – the last question – means what again?

COMPTON: Two million minutes is the amount of time children live in high school. And the premise of the film is, how you allocate your two million minutes will make all the difference in the individual’s career, and how a society’s teenagers allocate their two million minutes will make all the difference in that country’s economy in the decades to come.

LAMB: Bob Compton, we’re finished with our time, and thank you very much.

COMPTON: Thank you very much.