. >> brown: we sample two among many reactions to the president's plan now, with: bob wise, president of the policy group, "alliance for excellent education." he served as the governor of west virginia from 2001 to 2005. and diane ravitch, an education historian, official in the education department of the first bush administration, and author most recently of "the death and life of the great american school system." bob wise, starting with you as a general matter first, does the approach of president obama and secretary duncan make sense judge it's a significant upgrade require of no child left behind. no child left behind, 10 years almost, did some positive things forced us to look at the standardss, and forced us to use data in a significant way and for the first time focused a clear eye on the achievement gaps of many of our students. having said that, it also has a number of shortcomings that have increasingly become revealed. it does not provide the flexibility needed to deal with many of these situations, and from my organization's standpoint tdid not deal with high school. we

bob wise and diane ravitch, thank you both very much. >> ifill: finally tonight, does the u.s. need more college graduates in its workforce to remain competitive in the global economy? that was the central question at the kickoff of a new season of national debates hosted by the university of virginia's miller center of public affairs. former secretary of education margaret spellings and michael lomax, president of the united negro college fund, argued that we need more college graduates. george leef, director of research at the john william pope center for higher education in raleigh, north carolina, and richard vedder, professor of economics at ohio university argued that many jobs being created today don't require college degrees. here's an excerpt, moderated by "newshour" economics correspondent paul solman. >> is it not the case that the united states needs to have a more and more sophisticated workforce? isn't it the case if other countries with whoum we're compete regular becoming more sophisticated that that's a challenge to us, george? >> oh, it's a challenge. by putti