I am not really in the training business (high ed. is not really training).

My impression of what training is all about is not very good, frankly. When I have been offered trainers, I have usually been unimpressed by the credentials of the training. "Learning to write better research papers". Ok, Mr Smith, how many research papers have you written... oh! Zero? I have written lots... what are you going to teach me exactly?

I see a lot of support staff spending what seems to be a large fraction of their time in "training", usually for the most mundane things. The minute my organization ads a new web form, everyone seems to get a day of training. Isn't it great? How much does it cost? 30 000$?

Some years ago, there was a major investment in "endnote", reference annotation tool. EndNote does something almost entirely trivial. The people who took the training should know how to use a Word Processor, if they do, this new tool takes 5 minutes at the most to learn.

Almost everything I have learned, I have learned on my own. Of course, I am a social beast and I have learn by emulation to others, but if I want to set the time on my VCR, I will "train myself" thank you.

That is, of course, not entirely fair for training in the workplace. In terms of "important training", the famous video "Inbox Zero" comes to mind. This one was an eye opener and I really wish more people within my organization would "take this training" (read: watch the video).

In short, I certainly acknowledge the value training can add, but I must say that I have never taken it seriously. If I were to become a CEO (which will not happen), I might just take training for something to keep the employees happy, and get the unions out of my office.

(I'm equally harsh with the IT department, but that's for another day. Maybe.)