Nick Weigold Academic Conversation: Draft 1 The setting is in an international news station, Ox News, headquarted in Dallas, Texas.

The evening show, titled Topics That Matter, features the news anchorman, Nick Weigold, moderating a discussion between experts on a topic. Tonights topic is Global Competition in Education, the five experts for tonights topic are: William Mathis, David Drew, Marina Larionova, Ellen Hazelkorn, and Barack Obama. This panel of experts will participate via video chat and can be seen on television screens in the studio Mr. Weigold is seated at his desk in the newsroom. The show opens and everyone introduces themselves. OPENING SCENE NICK: Good evening viewers and welcome to our evening broadcast of Topics that Matter. Tonights topic is Global Competition in Education. We are honored to have a panel of experts with us via video chat this evening. (The camera focuses on the display of television screens showing each expert). Thank you for sharing your time with us here at Ox News this evening. Before we get started I would like to ask everyone to introduce themselves, starting on the left with Mr. Mathis. (With the cameraman focusing in on each expert as they introduce themselves.) WILLIAM MATHIS: I am William Mathis, the author of Is Education the Key to Global Economic Competitiveness. DAVID DREW: I am David Drew, author of STEM the Tide: Reforming Science, Technology, Engineering and Math Education in America. As the title of my book suggest, I have an interest in how STEM fields impact a countrys competitive edge in education. MARINA LARIONOVA: I am Marina Larionova, and am one of the authors of Constructing National Ranking Methodology: Dilemmas, Choices, and Decisions. ELLEN HAZELKORN: I am Ellen Hazelkorn, author of Rankings and the Battle for World Class Excellence: Institutional Strategies and Policy Choices. BARACK OBAMA: I am Barack Obama, President of the United States, and the speaker in the weekly address: To Win the Future, America Must Win the Global Competition in Education.

THE DISCUSSION BEGINS (The cameraman will air each speaker as they are talking throughout the discussion)

NICK: Great, now that everyone knows each other we can get started. I will conduct tonights discussion by first directing the question to one person, and then after that individual has had a chance to respond other panel members are welcome to respond to my question or to what another expert has said. I would like to start with a broad question, What do you think it means for a country to be globally competitive in education? President Obama, would you please provide us with your answer to this question. BARACK OBAMA: Well, I would say being competitive in education is about having the best education system, which could be evaluated based on a few different aspects. For example, which country produces the best, most skilled workers, who is leading innovation, and using resources efficiently and effectively to achieve advances in fields that are important to the future of the respective country. DAVID DREW: I would have to agree with President Obama that global competition in education is all about who has the best systems, but I would like to add that whoever has the strongest Math and Science programs is likely to win the race to be the best. My book STEM the Tide elaborates on my views about the importance to STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics) fields in building a globally competitive education system but essentially these fields define what achievements can be obtained by a country in a global economy. WILLIAM MATHIS: I also agree with President Obama, but I disagree with Mr. Drew that Math and Science programs are the most important for every country. Instead, I would have to say that every country should build on their own strengths, so some may have stronger Math and Science programs than others. NICK: Mr. Mathis and Mr. Drew, I like the points you both bring up and I look forward to reading more about your opinions in your writings. I also agree with President Obama that in order to have a globally competitive education system the system must be the best. This leads me to my next question, also first presented to President Obama, Why is it important for a country to have a globally competitive education system that tops that of other countries? BARACK OBAMA: In my opinion and speaking in terms of what is important to the United States of America we must win the global competition in education in order to win the competition for new jobs and industries. I think this idea is well known and accepted, but what measures are used to determine the level of competitiveness is more unclear. MARIA LARIONOVA: President Obama, as I note in my writings university rankings are a direct reflection of how competitive different countries are in the world economy. These rankings compare universities across the globe in areas of research, credentials of faculty members, graduation rates and job placement statistics, for example. Basically these rankings provide a way to quantify who is the best of the best.

ELLEN HAZELKORN: Ms. Larionova, I would agree with you that the rankings measure global competition in education. However, I do think that these rankings are not necessarily legitimate because anyone can create them, and often it is not really evident what the basis is for the rankings. MARIA LARIONOVA: I would also agree that these rankings could be a misrepresentation of how good or bad a countrys university system is compared to others and should perhaps not exist, but the fact is that they do, and to at least to some extent accurately measure the overall competitiveness of universities across the globe. ELLEN HAZELKORN: Exactly, simply put, we should be cautious when reading about university rankings and to remember that these rankings are only one measure in determining the value of countrys educational system. It seems that if nothing else these rankings create a competitive nature within higher education, which could be helpful in creating a workforce that supports new jobs and industry. So, perhaps these rankings are the tool that President Obama is looking for when determining just how competitive the United States can be in obtaining new jobs and new industries. NICK: Nice discussion about the university rankings. Perhaps this will spark some interest for our viewers to do some further reading about university rankings to get an even better understanding of how competitiveness is measured and countries are compared to each other. Viewers can visit our website to obtain links to the articles written by Ms. Larionova and Ms. Hazelkorn. One point I would like to spend a little bit of time on is this; President Obama brought up the idea that in order to win the global competition to win jobs and industries, we must win the global competition in education. So I would like to present this question to anyone, Is being competitive in education the key to global economic competitiveness? WILLIAM MATHIS: Mr. Weigold, I am very glad that you have asked this question. Those of you that have read my article know that I feel strongly about the correlation between a countrys education system and its global economy. I would like to say that educational success and economic competitiveness do have a mutual affect upon each other in a reciprocal manner. What I mean by this is if a country does not have a strong educational system it will not have a competitive economy and likewise a weak economy could have a negative impact on the educational system. It is sort of like which came first the chicken or the egg versus a putting the horse in front of the cart scenario. As you can see this is a complicated view point. However, something less complicated that I would like to say is to be economically successful not every country is going to have the same type of education system. All countries should implement what works best for them. DAVID DREW: This last remark by Mr. Mathis is very powerful I would have to agree with Mr. Mathis, that if we as the United States are going to have a more globally competitive and

effective economy, we must not imitate the strategies of other countries, we must build upon our own strengths. NICK: President Obama, after listening to the comments Mr. Mathis and Mr. Drew made, what do you think it is we, as the United States, must do in order to be more competitive globally within education? BARACK OBAMA: I would say in order to make our education system more competitive we must take advantage of the potential we have. The problem is not that we dont have what we need in order to competitive, it is more that we dont take advantage of opportunities we have. We have world-class universities and the students that graduate have the skills they need, we just must do a better job of connecting these students to businesses that need their skills and expertise. DAVID DREW: I think Mr. Obama brings up a very good point. Although, I believe our universities would produce better graduates if the focus was more on Science, Engineering, Technology and Math programs and how they relate to all sorts of industries. If our schools and universities spent most of their time on these programs, we would be much more competitive. WILLIAM MATHIS: Now wait a second, I dont think it is the best idea to dedicate most of our schooling to STEM programs; instead, we should encourage students to choose a field they are the most interested in studying. DAVID DREW: I dont know. I think it is a waste to allocate resources to the studies of such areas as liberal arts or social studies. WILLIAM MATHIS: Obviously we just arent going to agree on this. But I would like to share that having educated citizens that are well rounded in their knowledge has benefit to our society as a whole. NICK: This last remark would make a good segue into a future topic for this nightly show. But tonight we are out of time. I would like to thank all of you for your time and contributing to this weeks discussion. (All of the guests say goodbye together and the camera pans back to the news anchor as he addresses the audience and says goodbye) NICK: There you have it for this weeks edition of Topics That Matter. Thank you all for tuning in and be sure to tune in next week!

Nick Weigold Carrie Sippy ENGL 1102 April 9, 2013 Academic Conversation: Draft 2 Competition could be defined to be a contest in which the lofty goal of superiority over others is the desired outcome. It would not be unheard of for those involved in any competition to view such a task as a challenging goal to obtain. A contest that extends to the far reaches of the globe is even more difficult to consider. Finally, a competition that is defined in terms of two arenas is daunting. In this essay, I will be discussing global competition in education. I will be specifically addressing the following: what it means to be globally competitive within education, what is it that countries are being evaluated on in order to measure how competitive they are ,why countries must be competitive, and what we, as the United States, must do in order to be better than our competitors. To start, it is important to define what being globally competitive within education means. Competitiveness is created when there is a desire to be better than or equal to other people, organizations or countries. When you apply this to education it is all about who has the best education system. My topic for my inquiry is global competition in education, so it is important to understand it is all about different countries striving to have the best educational systems in the world.

In exploring global competition in education, the question of what criteria is used to evaluate countries may come up. It is important to understand how countries are determined to be competitive or not. While searching for secondary sources, I stumbled upon two different sources that were about international rankings in higher education. Both of these sources agreed that rankings can measure the successfulness of a countrys secondary educational system. Hazelkorn, author of Rankings and the Battle for World-Class Excellence: Institutional Strategies and Policy Choices, states that these rankings create a sense of competition between universities across the globe because every country wants to look strong, so there is a desire to be at the top of the rankings (Hazelkorn 5). Essentially, these rankings can determine whether a country is competitive or not, but they are constantly being criticized because anyone can create these rankings, and there is no set scale to grade educational systems on. In conducting primary research, I interviewed my mother, Tracey Weigold, a high school calculus teacher. I asked her How do you think a countrys educational system is deemed competitive or not? Her reply was a short answer, A countrys level of competitiveness would be based on their measureable success in educating students. I then asked, What it means to be successful? Her response was, In my opinion, being successful in education is based on the readiness of students to enter their next level of education and/or the workforce. Do they have the skills to problem solve and apply critical thinking strategies which ultimately will determine their effectiveness as employees and contributing members to the community? After hearing this I thought more about what the purpose of education. In doing research, I found an interesting statement in an article written by William Mathis. Mathis states, In a democracy, schools are designed to serve more than just a narrow economic purpose. They are to develop good citizens and good human beings who will contribute to the health and welfare of their society (Mathis

95). This supports my claim that whether a country is competitive or not is based on how successful they are at educating their citizens. This gave me the idea that whether a country is seen as educationally competitive or not could be hard to determine because the purpose of education varies for every country. For example, education in China serves as a strictly economic purpose; their goal is to create the best workers to later help strengthen their economy. But here in the United States we strive to create great workers that are also citizens that contribute to the wellbeing of our society. Therefore, China could be seen as not competitive in our eyes because they do not share these similar goals in their educational system. From here I began to explore why we must be competitive within education. In short, being competitive and being successful go hand in hand. For example, if a restaurant is competitive with other restaurants in the area, they will be bringing in business and generating a profit, this means they are successful because the whole objective of a restaurant is to bring in money. This also relates to education, because if we are to have a successful educational system in our country, we must be competitive within education. As Barack Obama states, In order to win the global competition to win new jobs and industries, we must first win the global competition in education by having an education system that tops that of our competitors for jobs and industries (Obama). This initial inquiry was enlightening and sparked a desire to explore what we can do better in the United States to be more competitive. Author, David Drew, writes in his book, STEM the Tide: Reforming Science, Technology, Engineering and Math Education in America that success is dependent upon various aspects such as good teachers, good leadership and

students who are willing to work hard (Drew 52). These are all important because they define our educational system. Teachers are the inspiration to motivate students to achieve the highest goals and quality leadership helps teachers coordinate their efforts to help students be the best that they can be. This is the most important final outcome because educated students are the ultimate product that demonstrates the worth of an educational system. Ultimately, competition in education is all about who can produce the best, most educated students. This can be rated by the students characteristics, and how well they can perform their jobs and daily tasks. It is important for us to win the global competition in education so we can move forward as a country and win the competition for new jobs and industries to boost our economy and overall, make our country stronger. There are many ways we can improve the effectiveness of our education system, and we are continuing to grow as a country, but there is still room for improvement. In my opinion, we need to do what works for us a country, and focus on our strengths and just continue to build on those. With all these thoughts it seems that we can win the contest and achieve lofty goals for our country.

Works Cited Mathis, William J. Is Education the Key to Global Economic Competitiveness? Teacher Educator 46.2 (2011): 89-97. Education Research Complete. Web. 28 Feb. 2013. Drew, David E. Stem the Tide. Baltimore: The John Hopkins University Press, 2011. Print. Larionova, Marina and Olga Perfilieva et al. Constructing National Ranking Methodology: Dilemmas, Choices, and Decisions. Problems Education in the 21st Century 48 (2012): 62-80. Education Research Complete. Web. 12 Mar. 2013. Hazelkorn, Ellen. Rankings and the battle for world-class excellence: Institutional strategies and policy choices. Higher Education Management and Policy 21.1 (2009): 1-21. OECD. Web. 14 Mar. 2013. Obama, Barack. Weekly Address: To Win the Future, America Must Win the Global Competition in Education. Hillsboro, OR. 19 Feb. 2011. The White House: Office of the Press Secretary.