Question: EXPLORING THE INTERNET

Although you may believe that your formal learning will end when you graduate and enter the working world, it won't. Companies both large and small spend billions of dollars annually in training employees and updating their knowledge and skills. Besides supporting employees who attend accredited continuing-education programs, companies also may provide more specialized in-house course work on new technologies, products, and markets for strategic planning. The Internet is an excellent search tool to find out about course work offered by private training organizations, as well as by traditional academic institutions. Learning online is a fast-growing alternative, especially for busy employees requiring updates to skills in the information technology (IT) field, where software knowledge must be refreshed continuously. Visit the text website for updates to this exercise.

Assignment: 1. Visit the websites of several academic institutions and examine their course work offerings. Also examine the offerings of some of the following private consulting firms: Learning Tree International:

www.learningtree.com

Accenture: www.accenture.com

KPMG:www.kpmg.com

Ernst & Young: www.ey.com/global

2. What professional continuing-education training and services are provided by one of the academic institutions whose site you visited?

3. What sort of training is offered by one of the preceding consulting firms?

4. From the company's point of view, what is the total real cost of a day's worth of employee training? What is the money value of one day of study for a full-time college student? Can you explain why firms are willing to pay higher starting salaries for employees with higher levels of education?

5. The American Society for Training & Development (www.astd .org/) and the Society for Human Resource Management (www .shrm.org/) are two good sources for information about online training programs. Describe what you found out at these and other sites providing online learning solutions.