Bill Clinton: “Well, I'm not an expert in your education system, although I have spent a little time trying to find out about it…”

“Well, I'm not an expert in your education system, although I have spent a little time trying to find out about it, because in my career in the U.S., my major area of interest was education. I think first you have a very strong basic system. Virtually all your people are literate. An enormous number of your people speak more than one language. And you have very strong technical programs. I would say you need to develop some of your educational programs for the professions that manage market economies. Do you have enough people who can run things in a very rapidly changing world? I think there are some gaps here, in other words, in the kinds of training you have for the kind of economy you're trying to develop. And I think some studies should be done about that, and you should provide those education programs. But you're actually quite fortunate in having a very literate society and a very strong background in the arts, the humanities, and in science and technology. Keep in mind one other thing. In most modern market economies, the average person, even if he or she stays with the same employer, will change the nature of their work seven or eight times in a lifetime. So it's impossible to give someone even a university degree that answers all the questions they will face in the workplace forever. So you have to develop systems of learning for a lifetime. And the most important thing is that you just get a good basic foundation that enables you to think well, to solve problems and to change, to learn as new things come along.”