Obama NYT interview on mathematics

President Obama mentioned mathematics three times in the May 3rd NYT interview conducted by David Leonhardt, saying in part: "...I don't just want to see more college graduates; I also want to specifically see more math and science graduates, ..."

He also had pointed remarks about education:

".... My grandmother never got a college degree. She went to high school. .... her high-school education was rigorous enough that she could communicate and analyze information in a way that, frankly, a bunch of college kids in many parts of the country can't. ... "

" ... part of the problem that we've got right now is that what it means to have graduated from high school, what it means to have graduated from a two-year college or a four-year college, is not always as clear as it was several years ago.

And that means that we've got to -- in our education-reform agenda -- we've got to focus not just on increasing graduation rates, but we've also got to make what's learned in the high school and college experience more robust and more effective."

Full interview: After the Great Recession.

(Note that the interviewer, David Leonhardt, studied applied mathematics at Yale.)