Appraising Relative Worth: Continuing-Education Opportunities for Engineers

Abstract

Continuing education represents a significant investment for engineering firms. With the rapid changes in technology and today's competitive marketplace, firms need continuing education to stay competitive. Yet, with an ever increasing array of choices, how does a firm decide what continuing education to invest in? This article describes a framework for improving decision making on continuing education. The benefits of this process include (1) improving the linkage of educational opportunities to business performance; (2) defining the decision process behind budgeting for continuing education; and (3) strengthening the information on which these decisions are based. This process unifies continuing education into a coordinated effort and integrates it with the other strategic initiatives of the firm.