Profiting from learning: firm-level effects of training investments and market implications.

Abstract

In this paper, the authors describe the expected increase in the importance of human capital investments, such as training, in affecting organisations' financial performance as economic value becomes more highly dependent on firms' knowledge-based assets. Yet, because such investments are difficult to measure and difficult to standardise, there is little information about the actual effects of such investments. As a result, information on human capital investments typically is currently not taken into account by stock analysts and investors. The authors describe research on a dataset of United States publicly-traded companies that finds that training investments are positively related to a variety of measures of financial performance, and provide an example describing the pathways through which training investments create value for a firm. They describe what steps would be necessary for such information to become more relevant for managers and for investors, discuss significant progress that has been made alo ng those lines, and point to additional steps that still must be taken.

Introduction

Do enterprises invest enough in employee training? Do they invest too much? What are the effects of such investments? These questions are of growing importance to the financial health of businesses around the world, as the economy shifts from the industrial era into one that is increasingly knowledge-based. Training and learning plays a vital role in the creation of intellectual property, which is today the source of substantial wealth creation for a growing number of companies. Most executives, managers, and stock-market analysts, however, are unable to produce satisfactory answers because they are relying on accounting and reporting systems developed in the industrial age. Most businesses do not know whether, or how much, value is created by their training efforts.

The fact that few businesses or market analysts can answer these questions almost surely leads to under-investment in education and training. Managers aren't certain whether additional training investments improve profitability, or if the stock market will recognise and reward them for these investments (since the productivity payoff may take some time to materialise). Investors have no idea how much firms train, or how these training investments improve long-run earnings prospects. Each of these manifestations of uncertainty regarding the effects of training has a similar effect: less training investment. Rational managers, unable to either identify training effects or justify training expenditures with hard evidence, will respond to the uncertainty by shying away from training, and rational investors, also with little clear evidence on the effects of training, will simply ignore training altogether when attempting to identify companies in the market with long-term prospects for abnormally large returns.

In order for businesses and capital markets to make more efficient human capital-related decisions, there are two key questions that must be answered: (1) are employee training expenditures associated with the creation of future value, and (2) if so, how can information on the effects of such investments be better communicated to managers and investors?

In this article, we present new evidence of an answer to the first question: businesses improve their market valuation (as well as many other measures of financial performance) when they invest more in training. As a result, investors could therefore improve their portfolio performance if they had access to information about firm training expenditures when making investment decisions. We also argue that those answers themselves may help to jump-start the forces needed to answer the second question--by influencing market pressures and incentives. Finally, we also describe a necessary prerequisite for the full solution to the information problem--a new system of, and means for reporting, standardised training metrics.

Ultimately, we believe that if organisations and investors take the information in this article and simply apply it in the pursuit of their own self-interest, that in itself will act as the necessary first step to uncorking full market-based pressures in this area. As described at the end of the article, some steps are being taken in this direction.

The Problem

Common wisdom suggests that the global economy has shifted from one in which mass-production methods dominate towards one in which knowledge rules. From the perspective of firms, this means that success may be increasingly tied to the ability to leverage large stores of knowledge-based capital--such as their employee skills, patent portfolios, or research and development. From the perspective of individual workers, these economic changes are manifested in a well-documented increase in the earnings returns to educational credentials and skills.

Yet while many managers believe in the growing importance of investing in skills through formal and informal training, existing accounting and other structures mean that most organisations are unable to adequately measure, report and evaluate these key investments. This creates a significant dilemma for firms, who find themselves unable to make well-informed decisions in an area that may be vitally important for their survival and success.

The central dilemma facing firms is the dearth of evidence that training creates value for organisations. Unlike research and development expenditures, firms are not required to regularly report training investments to shareholders. Firms that are interested in measuring their training investments (even in the absence of any requirements to do so) confront a number of fundamental measurement problems. The systems that firms use to track their expenditures and investments on materials and capital are inadequate for reliably measuring which employees have received training, and the type and intensity of that training. Complicating matters is that much of this training may occur in a highly decentralised manner, so that line-item expenditures for training are typically absent from a firm's books. In the absence of reliable information about firm training investments, therefore, it is not surprising that neither firms nor analysts have a good sense for how such investments affect future profitability.

Previous Research

Previous research on the effects of private training on firms has focused on productivity measures such as sales, and more generally has been limited by the paucity of data on firms' actual training investments. A detailed review of relevant literature can be found in Bartel (2000).

The intellectual foundation for research on human capital is the work of Becker (1962). Becker's work led to the prediction that firms would only pay for training that would not be of use to workers if they moved to another company. If correct, this would also result in a sub-optimal level of training, since most workers are likely to be unable to meet their other training needs--so-called "general" skills training--without assistance from their employer (either because of lack of time outside work, or money, or both). In particular, workers may be unable to finance investments in their own general training because they typically cannot borrow from future earnings. In principle, they might be able to overcome this problem by accepting "training wages" below their marginal value product, thereby compensating the firm for training expenditures through the lower wages, but in practice this is often complicated by existing laws (e.g., minimum wage).

There is significant evidence, however, that firms bear the costs of a good deal of training for workers, often including general skills training. Evidence suggests that this maybe explained in part by labor market frictions which may cause a widening gap between the marginal value product of workers and their wages as workers' skill increases (Acemoglu and Pischke, 1999). A number of researchers have examined the effects of such workplace training.

Bartel (1994) presents one of the first attempts to estimate the effects of private training on productivity using firm-level data, using a 1986 sample of 495 manufacturing firms. The key explanatory variable of interest in her analysis is an indicator for whether the firm provides any formal training to employees (but not the actual amount spent on training). She finds that the provision of training programmes between 1983 and 1986 is positively correlated with firms' 1986 sales per employee.

Holzer et al (1993) analyse data for 157 manufacturing firms in the United States that had applied for state subsidies to support private training programmes. They find that receipt of a training subsidy increases training hours within a firm by a factor of two to three in the short term, and reduces output "scrap rates" by around 13 per cent (corresponding to a savings of between $30,000 and $50,000 per year). The survey does not identify the training costs actually borne (invested) by the firm.

Black and Lynch (1996) analyse data from the United States National Center on the Educational Quality of the Workforce (EQW)'s national 1994 telephone survey of 2,945 private firms with more than 20 employees. Black and Lynch find that the log of the number (or proportion) of workers who are trained in either 1990 or 1993 does not have a statistically significant correlation with the log of the firm's 1993 sales for either manufacturing or non-manufacturing firms. The provision of computer training has a positive, statistically significant correlation with sales for non-manufacturing firms, but not for manufacturing establishments. Interpretation of these estimates, however, is complicated by the cross-sectional survey structure, which limits the authors' ability to control for unmeasured firm characteristics.

Recent research by Hansson (2001), examining a Swedish firm, finds that employers are willing to finance, and able to extract the rents from, general human capital investments for their employees. Examining the market pricing of knowledge-based firms, the author also finds that human-capital intensive firms experience higher risk-adjusted market returns than firms with more traditional assets and investments (which are more fully accounted for and reported in the existing accounting system). His findings suggest that lack of information about human capital investments results in an underestimation of future earnings and returns.

Managing Training in the Face of Uncertainty

Managers are understandably reluctant to devote significant resources to training activities that are expensed as costs (rather than amortised over time like an investment) and have uncertain effects on future productivity. A related problem is that training investments may require some time to translate into productivity gains, as workers and organisations gradually respond to the new skill set of the workforce. Business managers who face a continuing series of short-term pressures might, in principle, invest in training anyway as long as the stock market rewarded them for their projected gains in long-term productivity. But if market analysts don't know what firms are doing to develop their human capital, training becomes the proverbial tree that falls in the empty forest.

Despite this uncertainty, however, business managers do seem to invest in training. Data collected by the American Society for Training & Development (ASTD) indicate that the direct costs for formal training are typically on the order of 2 per cent of payroll, while indirect and opportunity costs may raise the total to 10 per cent or even much more. Further, the costs of investments in informal learning are likely at least as large as investments in formal learning. Nevertheless, investments in training and learning are almost surely lower than what would occur in a world in which firms (and investors) had full information about the amount of the firm's training and its effects on the bottom line.

This information problem is not, of course, the only potential impediment to firm training investments. Unlike investments in physical capital, the firm does not own the underlying asset (the employee him or herself) in which it needs to invest. As a result, a human asset can walk out the door at any time, which also creates some understandable reluctance for firms to make significant investments in training.

Reducing the Uncertainty: Training Does Create Value

Most fundamentally, what managers and investors need is better information on which to base any training-related decisions. Using unique new data on training investments gathered by ASTD, our analysis strongly suggests that training creates value for organisations. This evidence should provide managers with some of the information necessary to make good, informed decisions about whether to invest more in training, and should also prompt investors to seek out and invest in more training-intensive firms.

Whence this new understanding about the impact of training investments? Over the past several years the ASTD has tried to begin to "solve" the training-information problem by working with firms to measure training investments in a standardised manner. Beginning in 1997, ASTD provided organisations with (previously non-existent) standard definitions and metrics for capturing and valuing their investments in training. Many organisations used these standards and provided their data to ASTD (on the condition that their specific information be kept confidential). In return, they received benchmarking information from ASTD, which showed how their own training investments and outcomes matched up with various reference groups.

By 2001, ASTD had collected a database of training information on over 3,000 firms across the world. These firms are of all sizes, come from all industries, and represent over 60 countries. The majority of the firms (approximately 60 per cent) are headquartered in the United States.

The database includes information on the dollar amount that each firm spends on training per employee, as well as the type of training that is provided, and how the training is delivered.

Our analysis focused on the U.S.-based firms, because these companies represented the largest portion of the database, and because consistent financial data were available publicly for all publicly-traded firms in the group. At the time this analysis was conducted, 575 of the U.S. firms in the database were publicly traded firms. We linked their information on education and training investments to the publicly-reported financial performance data.

We examine a number of different financial variables (as described below), but focus much of our attention on firms' stock market returns, which capture the market's full summary judgment regarding both a firm's performance and its future prospects (1). Specifically, we examine whether training investments in one year affect the total stockholder return, or TSR, during the following year. TSR is defined as the change in stock price plus any dividends issued in a given year. It is the measure that best reflects the return that would be experienced by an individual investor who owned shares of a given company in a given year.

The expectation is that, if training investments do create value for the firm, then above-average financial results and future stock returns should result for those companies that make significant training investments. Because such investments appear as costs to the market (due to their current accounting treatment), investors are unable to accurately project improvements in financial results that should accrue to the firm as a result of the training investments. Instead, financial results will be better than expected, thereby improving average future stock returns for such companies. Knowledge of such training investments, on the other hand, should help to predict future performance and market returns.

Our Findings

Our central finding is that data on organisational training investments do indeed help predict the future TSR of a firm (as well as other measures of the firm's financial performance).

Our analysis examines whether firms with higher training investments in 1996, 1997 and 1998 (the only available data at the time of the analysis) also have higher TSR's the following year. Figure 1 tells the key story: Firms in the top quartile with respect to training investments have higher median TSR's in the subsequent year than firms in the other three training quartiles. Further, the third quartile is higher then the second, and the second is higher than the first.

Medians (the number for which half of the given group has a higher TSR, and half has a lower TSR) are used to calculate the "average" TSR for each quartile because medians are somewhat more stable and are not disproportionately affected by a few outliers. For any investor constructing a portfolio, however, outliers are of significant interest and should not be discounted, since these are likely to have a huge effect on the ultimate success or failure of the selected investments.

Therefore, the mean-the arithmetic average of a group of numbers--may actually be a better measure. An even more striking pattern emerges when means are examined. Organisations in the top half in terms of training expenditures in one year have a mean TSR in the following year of 36.9 per cent, while organisations in the bottom half have a mean TSR of only 19.8 per cent. For comparison purposes, the S&P 500 (weighted to reflect the yearly composition of the database) had an annual return of 25.5 per cent during this same period. Thus, firms that spend more than average on training have TSR's that are 86 per cent higher than firms that spend less than average, and 45 per cent higher than the market average.

Of course, other explanations for these associations are possible. For example, it may be that riskier or more inherently productive industries are also more likely to need to train, in which case the relationship in Figure 1 could be spurious and simply reflect the causal effects of these other factors, rather than training. In order to control for such factors, we used a more sophisticated statistical model (multivariate regression) that is able to take into account individual firm characteristics such as industry, size, prior financial performance and earnings, as well as other financial factors (e.g., expenditures on capital equipment and research and development).

Even after taking these factors into account, we still observe a significant, positive relationship between training investments and TSR. The inclusion of the education and training investment variable improves the power to predict future TSR's by 50 per cent. Without taking training into account, the other factors explain only 12 per cent of the variation in TSR, reflecting the belief that the stock market is essentially a "random walk," in which it is impossible to predict future stock prices with publicly-available data. When education and training are taken into account, the explanatory power increases to 18 per cent.

What are the implications of this effect? Its magnitude is substantial: A one standard deviation increase in a firm's annual per-employee investment in education and training (equal to around $680) generates a 6 percentage point improvement in next year's TSR, even after controlling for many other important factors. Such effects are certainly large to be of significant economic interest.

Is this pattern limited only to TSR? Hardly. We observe similar results for most of the key measures of financial performance and valuation that we examined, including (a) gross profit margin, (b) return on assets, (c) income per employee, and (d) the ratio of price to book value (see Figures 2a to 2d).

In most cases, the firms that train more also demonstrate better performance on the financial measures. These results suggest that the differences in TSR reflect other differences in actual measures of firm productivity across organisations with different training investments in the previous year.

We take one additional step to control for other factors that could be driving these results, and we look at percentage changes in the same financial variables from one year to the next (see Figure 3a to 3d). The statistical technique of examining changes in variables, enables us to control for all other potentially relevant, but unobservable, factors that may be driving the differential financial performance of firms across training quartiles. The same pattern (high training associated with larger percentage changes, or improvement in performance) emerges for most of the variables.

What does the positive association between training expenditures and future TSR mean? From the perspective of firms, it means that training expenditures do positively affect other productivity indicators that are observed and valued by the stock market. From the perspective of investors, this positive relationship indicates that the market is unable to fully incorporate the effects of training into a firm's stock price in a given year (this is because there is no public information available on training); instead, the market responds with some lag. Given the current status of such information, investors who were somehow able to gain direct knowledge of firms' training expenditures could theoretically exploit this lag and assemble a training-heavy portfolio that enjoyed excess returns.

Quantity versus Quality

A quite reasonable objection to the findings discussed in this article may emerge: namely, the results focus only on quantity of training (dollars spent)--what about the quality of training? We couldn't agree more. The organisation that created the standard measures of training investments, ASTD, does also have standardised measures of training outcomes (as assessed by training participants and their managers)--but currently, these have only been used by relatively few (some hundreds of) organisations. In the coming years, we should indeed be able to look at the impact of training quality on financial performance, but not until ASTD is able to gather a larger database of such information.

In the meantime, it seems that these results are strongly suggestive that even the most basic measures of the quantity of training provided by an organisation is of significance in determining organisational performance and stock market valuation. This information represents an important first step toward putting investments in training on an equal footing with other strategic investments. There are, however, a number of significant issues that require additional exploration.

Obstacles to Publicly-available Training Information

Since mandatory publicly-reported information on training is in the interests of both firms and investors, why is such information not already made available? The two primary obstacles have been:

1. the lack of a standardised system for measuring and valuing training investments; and

2. that existing systems for accounting for and reporting organisational investments have never included knowledge-related areas, such as human capital.

Lack of Standard Metrics

The lack of standard metrics has, for obvious reasons, helped to retard the development of public information in this area. Without a common set of principles and shared understanding across organisations on how to measure human capital investments, it would be extremely difficult for public disclosure to be useful, even if it were to occur.

It traditionally falls to the public sector to establish standards for various forms of measurement. In cases in which there is no action from any such institution, typically the resulting vacuum remains unfilled. Until recently, this was the case in the training field as well--there was simply no system that could be used across organisations to capture meaningful and consistent information in the area of training. ASTD's system of standard training metrics does serve to fill this vacuum, although not as efficiently as government-promulgated standards might have filled it. Even ASTD, though well-placed in the training community, has found that it is hard, slow work to educate organisations on the availability and applicability of its freely-available set of standard metrics.

Existing Accounting/Reporting Structures

Current Generally Accepted Accounting Principles (GAAP) in the United States treat training as a cost--and a hidden one at that. Certainly the absence of knowledge capital in general, and human capital in particular, from the standards included under GAAP made sense in the industrial era. Most, if not all, forms of knowledge capital are extraordinarily difficult areas in which to attempt to place a dollar value, and in most cases, such areas were not central to an industrial-era business. Human capital has always presented additional difficulties, owing in part to its unique status as the one field in which the firm does not own the asset in which the investment is being made.

In the field of business accounting and financial reporting in the United States, institutions like the Federal Accounting Standards Board (FASB) and the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) carry enormous weight in determining how expenditures are measured and reported by organisations. Although both organisations have given some consideration to new standards or requirements in areas like human capital, significant changes are made slowly and often reluctantly, and neither has yet moved for more significant public disclosure of knowledge-related capital generally.

Thus, organisations that adhere to FASB guidelines (and this includes basically all U.S. publicly-traded companies) do not include training as an investment in their standard accounting--even if they are one of the rare organisations that truly does try to manage training purely as an investment. Organisations have strong incentives to report publicly only that information that they are required to report, as they are liable to shareholders for the accuracy of all financial information that is publicly released. As a result, they are extremely reluctant to expand that liability beyond the minimum core of information that they are already required to make public. This factor, combined with the accounting treatment of training as a cost, has made it extremely rare for any organisation to ever make public any meaningful information on its training investments or practices.

Indeed, a study (O'Connor 1998) using the 1996 annual reports of all Fortune 500 companies found that not a single organisation released meaningful information on its training expenditures, and the number that released any information on training time could be counted on one hand. Similarly, an extensive Nexis search for organisations that have made any public statements about their training expenditures located not a single example. ASTD reports that the most frequent query from potential respondents in their data collection is whether such information will be kept confidential. Clearly, organisations don't believe that there's currently any reward at all for making such information public--in part, this is likely because training is officially an expenditure, and market pressures are to reduce costs, especially hidden ones. If there are positive effects of training investments, it is currently impossible for market incentives to encourage such investments.

It is instructive to compare the impact of training investments on market valuation with the impact of another publicly-reported type of corporate investments: research and development. This is also correlated with a variety of measures of financial performance. Indeed, the patterns between R&D and measures of financial performance are similar, although a bit less consistent than the patterns observed in Figures 2 and 3. Both types of corporate investments are relevant to performance, but training is not reported publicly.

Where Next for Managers and for Everyone Else?

Overcoming the obstacles discussed above is a significant undertaking, and we don't have all the answers. We do, however, believe that we have made significant inroads in addressing some of the most fundamental issues that have caused and maintained the information failure in this area.

There are at least two prerequisites that must be met before any further progress can be made in addressing the information problem. Both prerequisites have now been achieved. First, a standard system for capturing training information is necessary. ASTD has established such a system. Second, there must be hard evidence that such information is relevant-that training actually has an impact on the performance and profitability of organisations. This has been demonstrated by the research presented above.

In principle, the discovery that training does affect valuation and financial performance should, by itself, create pressure for changes to be made so that such information is available to the market and its investors. Investors, acting in their own self interests, want all relevant information in order to make the best possible investment decisions. In light of the significant effect of training investments on returns, investors should begin seeking training information from publicly-traded firms, while firms themselves will likely find that their performance will improve with increased training investments. If even a few training-heavy organisations, acting in their own self-interest, recognise the potential benefits of releasing some selected training information, even in the face of strong reasons not to make such disclosures, then investors will be able to act on such information and reward firms that are doing more training.

In one such effort, two of the authors of this study have started a money management fund in the United States that makes its investments in those companies that make significant investments in their workers. (2)

This should create additional incentives for other organisations to release such information, ultimately creating a positive feedback loop in which market pressures build and produce responses from organisations.

The usefulness of early public disclosures on training would be made more valuable if they were released in a standard way--which, fortunately, is one of the benefits of the ASTD system of standard metrics. Moreover, the ASTD measurement system also includes standardised evaluations of training outcomes. These measurement tools (www.astd.org) go a long way toward providing:

* managers with high quality benchmarking data that can be used to improve the outcomes that result from training investments, and

* standardised measures of the quality (in addition to the quantity) of training investments.

In the long run, it will be necessary for a more systemic, less ad hoc, solution to the information problem. And in reality, of course, significant education efforts will likely be required to bring about necessary changes in a system that currently, along a variety of dimensions, stifles the collection and release of such information. Most importantly, these systemic changes will include changing accounting and reporting standards to reflect the new understanding that training is an investment, that training "matters" in the market and that incentives need to be shifted to make standardised information publicly available. When such changes in reporting standards and practices do come about, all interested parties will benefit. What a shame it would be not to take advantage of this opportunity.

Conclusion

The question of the effect of employee training expenditures on business performance and market returns has key implications for the behaviour and efficiency of firms and capital markets as well as individual managers and individual investors. Prevailing uncertainty about the effects of such investments would be expected to lead to an under-investment in training by firms. At the same time, a lack of information regarding the level of such human capital investments by different firms, combined with lack of information on their effects, would lead to financial markets largely ignoring firms' expenditures in this area. Both are inefficient outcomes that are unlikely to change until additional information becomes available on the effects of such expenditures.

At the same time, the current situation regarding financial markets' treatment of training investments leads to a clear hypothesis: firms' training investments, assuming they create value for the firm, should help to predict future market returns as well as financial performance. Because the gains in performance caused by such investments are not taken into account by the market, performance will be underestimated for firms that make above-average investments in training. Future returns should thus be abnormally large for such firms as the true effects of their investments become clear in financial performance results.

We examine this question by using a unique database gathered by ASTD which contains information on the level of individual firms' investments in employee training. Our results indicate that firms' training investments do serve to predict future market returns, and are also associated with other measures of financial performance, such as gross profit margin, return on assets, sales per employee, and the market measure of market-to-book ratio. Further, training investments are positively associated with changes in the value of each of those measures, which allows us to rule Out the possibility that potentially relevant, but unobservable, factors may be driving the differential financial performance of firms across training levels.

We believe that these results, in combination with other evidence of the positive effects of training investments, should help to solve two problems of uncertainty. Firms and their managers should be more willing to make efficient levels of training investments, armed with additional evidence that such investments result in positive returns for the firm. Moreover, investors, who can improve their performance by taking into account information on firm training investments, should increasingly begin to seek such information from firms and incorporate it into their investment decisions. Such a development would have dual consequences: more efficient functioning of the markets and positive pressure from the markets for firms to make such investments in their human capital, and to report such investments publicly.

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End Notes

(1.) For a more detailed description of related analysis of stock returns, see Bassi, Harrison, Ludwig, and McMurrer, "Human Capital Investments and Firm Performance" (2001), available at http://www.knowledgeam.com/aa.pdf.

(2.) For additional information, see www.knowledgeam.com.

References

Amecoglu, D. and Jorn-Steffen, P., 1999. "The Structure of Wages and Investment in General Training." Journal of Political Economy, 107: 539-572.

Becker, Gary S., 1962. "Investment in Human Capital: A Theoretical Analysis." Journal of Political Economy, 70: 9-49.

Bartel, A.P., 2000. "Measuring the Employer's Return on Investments in Training: Evidence from the Literature." Industrial Relations, 39(3): 502-524.

Bassi, L.J., Harrison, P., Ludwig, J., and McMurrer, DP., 2001. "Human Capital Investments and Firm Performance." Unpublished working paper, available at http://www.knowledgeam.com/

Black, S.E., and Lynch, L.M., 1996. "Human-Capital Investments and Productivity." American Economic Review, 86(2): 263-267.

Hansson, B., 2001. Essays on Human Capital Investments. Stockholm University School of Business Research Report 2001-14.

Holzer, H.J., Block, R.N., Cheatham, M., and Knott, J.H., 1993. "Are Training Subsidies for Firms Effective? The Michigan Experience." Industrial and Labor Relations Review. 46(4): 625-636.

O'Connor, M., 1998. "Rethinking Corporate Financial Disclosure of Human Resource Values for the Knowledge-Based Economy." University of Pennsylvania Journal of Labor and Employment Law 1(2): 527-6 13.

Daniel P. McMurrer

Daniel P. McMurrer is Chief Research Officer at Knowledge Asset Management, Inc., and is Vice President, Research, at Human Capital Capability, Inc.

Jens Ludwig

Jens Ludwig, PhD, is Associate Professor of Public Policy at Georgetown University.

Laurie J. Bassi

Laurie J. Bassi, PhD, is Chair of the Board at Knowledge Asset Management, Inc., and is CEO and Managing Partner of Human Capital Capability, Inc.

Mark E. Van Buren

Mark E. Van Buren is Director of Research at the American Society for Training and Development. He oversees ASTD's primary research on enterprise training and education, including worldwide industry trends, training for low-skill and low-wage workers, and training metrics. His particular fields of expertise are in the areas of e-learning and knowledge management. Received a PhD and Masters Degree in Sociology from the University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill, and both a BA in Sociology and a BS in Computer Science from the University of Dayton.