level of skill, and the result is an apparent excess of supply relative to a declining demand. these changing balances are most evident in the failure of real wages at the lower end of our income distribution to rise during the past quarter - century. the hypothesis that we should be able to improve upon the knowledge that our students acquire as they move from kindergarten to twelfth grade gains some support from international comparisons. a study conducted in 1995 revealed that, although our fourth - grade students were above average in both math and science, by the time they reached their last year of high school they had fallen well below the international average. 1 accordingly, we apparently have quite a distance to go before we catch up. early last century, technological advance required workers with a higher level of cognitive skills - for instance the ability to read manuals, to interpret blueprints, or to understand formulas. youth were pulled from rural areas, where opportunities were limited, into more - productive occupations in business and an advancing manufacturing sector. our educational system responded : in the 1920s and 1930s, high - school enrollment in this country expanded rapidly. it became the job of these institutions to prepare students for work life. in the context of the demands of the economy at that time, the third international math and science study is a project of the international study center, lynch school of education, boston college. a complete set of timss publications is available on the center ’ s web site, http : / / timss. bc. edu / timss1995i / timsspublications. html. a high - school diploma represented the training needed to be successful in most aspects of american enterprise. the economic returns for having a high - school diploma rose and, as a result, high - school enrollment rates climbed. by the time that the united states entered world war ii, the median level of education for a seventeen - year - old was a high - school diploma - an accomplishment that set us apart from other countries. i cannot dismiss the notion that we can learn something from that period and perhaps from other countries. still, i realize that the world was different from today in many ways. societal changes have been numerous and profound, and our schools are being asked to do a great deal more than they have in the past. we need to be forward - looking in order to adapt our educational system to the evolving needs of the economy and the realities of our changing society. one area in which educational investments appear to have

paid off is our community colleges. these two - year institutions are playing a similar role in preparing our students for work life as did our early twentieth - century high schools in that less technically oriented era. but to an even greater extent, our population today is adjusting to an ever - faster turnover of jobs. we are also growing more aware that in the current intensely competitive economy, the pace of job creation and destruction implies that the average work life will span many jobs and even more than one profession. the desire of workers to learn skills that build on their previous work experiences or to acquire new skills is apparent. currently almost one in three of the enrollees in community colleges and almost one of two part - time enrollees at four - year undergraduate schools are aged thirty or older, statistics that suggest that these individuals have had previous job experience. the increase in these enrollments over the past thirty years attests to the success of these institutions in imparting both general and practical job - related training. a rising proportion of the population is also taking advantage of workrelated instruction. more broadly, our system of higher education bears an important responsibility for ensuring that our workforce is prepared for the demands of economic change. america ’ s reputation as the world ’ s leader in higher education is grounded in the ability of these versatile institutions to serve the practical needs of the economy by teaching and training and, more significantly, by unleashing the creative thinking that moves our economy forward. * * * i do not doubt that the vast majority of us would prefer to work in a less stressful, less competitive environment. yet, in our roles as consumers, we seem to relentlessly seek the low product prices and high quality that are prominent features of our current frenetically competitive economic structure. retailers who do not choose their suppliers, foreign or domestic, with price and quality uppermost in mind, risk losing their customers to retailers who do. retailers are afforded little leeway in product sourcing. if consumers are stern taskmasters of their marketplace, business purchasers of capital equipment and production materials inputs have taken the competitive paradigm a step further and applied it on a global scale. those who have lost jobs as a consequence of this process, i know, are not readily consoled by the fact that job insecurity concerns are not new. but keeping the current period in context is instructive. jobs in the united states were perceived as migrating to low - wage japan in the 1950s and 1960s, to low