Missouri

I can understand the tendency to cut back education dollars since the results of a better education seem hard to measure, benefits-wise. I know that major companies engaging in training their work forces coming in for areas such as software development/support/etc. spent a lot of dollars in doing so, so in some cases, mandated that in exchange for this training, employee w/ be forgiven a partial amount of training costs during a year by year basis, usually lasting until 3-5 years. This way, the corporation was guaranteed that it retained the benefits of its training dollars, e.g., employee was retained somewhere in the corporation roster.

This is of course better than going to all of the expense of training an employee, and then at end of training or immediately afterwards, that employee leaves the corporation for another job.

Another method was to have employees on a 'probationary' basis during training, and then afterwards during their work career on short term basis, lasting a year or so.

Measuring the success of training dollars has long been a hard thing to do. If anyone can come up w/ a solution, then come forward. W/ the job markets being technology-driven, and the cycle is going faster and faster, this is a major challenge for companies as they run the fine line of risk by doing too little or too much and then getting caught on the wrong side.

This is where the state education dollars comes in, helping the Mom and Pop operations and small companies in providing these training dollars. Also, in economically challenged areas of the state, these education funds can be a life saver for citizens and provide them w/ better economic choices than what is currently available.