Obama to top-notch India and China. Calls education reforms in America

President Barack Obama who called on education reforms to prepare Americans for a global economy, where jobs can go anywhere said, "Billions of people from countries like India and China are striving hard to out-educate Americans in Mathematics and Technology."

He said, "In previous generations, America's standing economically was so much higher than everybody else's that we did not have a lot of competitions."

In his remarks to students at the Pathways in Technology Early College High School in Brooklyn on Friday, he said, "Now you have got billions of people from Beijing to Bangalore to Moscow, all of whom are competing with you directly. And these countries are working every day to out-educate and out-compete us."

"And every year brings more research showing them pulling ahead, especially in some of the subject matter that this school specialises in -- math and science and technology. So we have got a choice to make. If the workforce is not educated enough, it will be left behind and find it hard to get a job that pays a living wage," Obama said.

The President said, "America has to educate its young people and prepare them for the global economy. We need to bring down the cost of college and give more young people the chance to go to college. So a couple of months ago, I put forward an ambitious new plan to do that, to reduce the cost of college."

Mr. Obama stressed that America needs a budget that is responsible, fiscally prudent, and one that -cuts what we don't need, closes wasteful tax loopholes that don't create jobs, freeing up resources to invest in the things that actually do help us grow things like education and scientific research, and infrastructure, roads, bridges, airports.

Having dealt with the government shutdown, Mr. Obama has his eyes set on passing the country's immigration reforms. He said, "As we close out the new year, we still have a chance to get immigration reform done and a chance to affirm that we are a nation of laws and a nation of immigrants."