New Opportunities for Higher Education Institutions to Train Employees?

Higher education institutions are confronted with a declining growth in the number of students in initial education. At the same time, the market for training of employees has increased significantly. Between 1993 and 1999, the total training volume on this market has doubled. However, at least in the Netherlands, higher education institutes altogether have only a small and stable share in the training of employees of about 2%. The central question of this paper is to what extent the growing possibilities of using ICT as a training tool can help higher education institutes to enhance their position in the market of training of employees. The empirical evidence presented does not support the expectation that ICTis already the vehicle leading to drastic changes. A large scale survey among companies at the end of the nineties in the Netherlands showed that the use of ICT as a training tool was at that time limited to only 12% of all training incidences. Moreover, the companies did not expect a strong growth. This has to do with a large variety of bottlenecks companies perceive. Succesful implementation means dealing with considerations from many angles: pedagogical, technical, organisational and last but least cost-efficiency. Even if the use of ICT as a training tool would rise considerable, this would not automatically mean an improvement of the position of higher education institutes. The survey results do not give indications that higher education institutions have a relative large share in ICT-based training.