Universal, government supported education is one of the cornerstones of modern American society. One of the underlying principles supporting this notion is that endeavors that provide wide benefit to a large portion of a society should be supported by the society in general and not just by those individuals who receive the most direct benefit. This is the same model used in the support of fire departments and law enforcement agencies. These activities are seen as benefiting a broad enough segment of a society that they should be universally available and their costs should be borne by the society as a whole.

Should this view be tempered by the specificity of the learning, particularly if the learning can be shown to directly benefit a small group of people or organizations more than the society as a whole?

In the area of vocational education there is often a gray area that some say is the responsibility of public education and others say is the responsibility of the employer.

Anyone who has developed educational or training materials will tell you that there is a fairly simple formula that will tell you when the development of materials is economically feasible. Depending on the topic area and the type of instruction it generally requires between 40 and 100 hours of development to produce 1 hour of classroom instruction. If the developer makes $40.00 per hour the total cost for the development might be between $1,600.00 and $4,000.00. If this instruction is in the form of a one hour seminar that you can reasonably sell for $99.95 per student then it is easy to see what type of audience you must be able to attract to make the development worth while. If you can reasonably expect to attract only ten students to the seminar you will not cover the cost of development. If on the other hand you can reasonably expect to attract one hundred students then the endeavor will cover its development costs and then some.

Written by
Vance Williams
posted-posthumously