My last days in the corporate world (a large US data provider) were full of course building nonsense. No one wanted to attend the course (do you want to attend a course?) in person or electronically. The only way to get people to do it was to put that word "mandatory" in front of it. Or have the legal department issue threats. Oh, what a great learning environment! I worked (covertly) to help small groups build wikis and it worked. Then I was threatened with termination for working on non-departmental projects. I left a month later and took a job at a cool independent school.

Lots of corporate traditions will be ending, and the training department is one of them. It's simply not a good use of resources. To be sure, lots of companies will continue to have a training department - but you have to wonder how long those companies will be around. I used to worry when the layoffs were happening cause we all know training is one of the first places to be cut. But then I realized it made sense....