A Trend to Explore in Adult Education: The White Collar Employee. The Corporation. The Education Provider/Vendor.

Overview & Synopsis

The role of the corporate white collar worker is changing to become more complex and technically oriented. As the white collar work force is becoming more educated and accepting the idea of lifelong learning as the key to personal and job growth, the corporate community is recognizing the fact. Corporations are beginning to revise their approach to education and training to meet a fast growing increase in training and education needs and to realize that skills in other than "job-related" areas are justified. Providers of education continue to expand, with private education vendors turning to the corporation as a primary client. Increasingly, workers see the corporation as an expected provider of lifelong education to parallel the personal adult education these same workers are participating in on their own and in the community. The corporation can either provide its own internal (and costly) shadow education system, or it can create an option mix system using both internal and education vendor offerings according to what is most effective for each circumstance. There is a growing need for a program to provide a point of interface between the corporate educator and the education vendor. Its services would include an information gathering system, workshop/conference service, and information distribution service. (YLB)