The Value of a Foreign Education

“U.S. Is a Free Market When It Comes to CEOs” (June 2) by Michael Schrage makes the interesting point that chief executive officers or managing directors of the American companies Coca-Cola, Apple Computer Inc., Ford Motor Co., McKinsey & Co., Compaq Computer Corp., 3M, Intel and Salomon Bros. are “all foreign-born and -bred.”

This doesn’t say much for top American managers who would dearly love one of those positions. This fact should be noted: Without exception, those eight executives are from countries where it is necessary for a student to be able to find countries on both a map and globe; to be able to add, subtract, multiply and divide--manually; to be able to write grammatically correct sentences--and all before graduating from high school!

ANDREW J. BYRNE

Alhambra