Diverse reporter Michelle Nealy chats with Indianapolis venture-capitalist-turned-filmmaker, Bob Compton, about his provocative new documentary, “2 Million Minutes.” The film chronicles six students from India, the United States and China during their high school years. Compton highlights the pitfalls of American education in today’s global economy and praises those cultures that revere academic achievement.

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DI: What inspired you, a very successful entrepreneur, to direct a film about high school education, and why title it “2 Million Minutes”?

BC: “2 Million Minutes” is the amount of time that any one lives during a four-year time period. What I’m looking at in the film is the four years spent in high school in three different locations: India, China and the United States.

I came about making the film after a trip to India in 2005. One of my companies assembled about 100 software developers in Bangalore, India. We took them out to dinner. I went from table to table to get to know them, expecting to meet math and science geeks who would be socially awkward.

What I discovered was that these young men and women, ages 25-35, were very well spoken, very globally aware, knowledgeable about U.S. history and European history. They were not geeks as I expected.

I decided to make a film that would let the American viewers go not only into the schools but the homes and hangouts of Indian, Chinese and American teenagers and see how in each culture the students, guided by their families, allocated their two million minutes.