Paul Bouchard, Ph.D - 1 TRAINING AND WORK: SOME MYTHS ABOUT HUMAN CAPITAL Paul Bouchard, Ph.D. Concordia University, Montreal CANADA Reference – Bouchard, P. (1998). Training and work: Some myths about Human Capital Theory, in Spencer B & Scott S. (Eds.), A Canadian Reader in Adult Education (pp.33- 68). Toronto: Thompson Publishing Co. "The planning system relies on the state for its large needs in qualified and educated manpower. This, as we shall presently see, is a matter of considerable social portent. The state not only educates those who accept and defend the values of the planning system. It also nurtures its critics - for there is no practical way of doing the one without the other." - John Kenneth Galbraith (1973), p.156. Ongoing changes in global economic structures, along with the much talked about information revolution, have produced an environment where knowledge and skills, and by extension education and training, are considered increasingly valued commodities in the workplace. This trend is not only reflected in changes in today's employment requirements, where more years of schooling are expected of entry-level employees; it is also the basis of a perceived need to increase efforts at maintaining and upgrading work related knowledge and skills. This has direct implications for the education of adults, specifically. In recent years, adults over 25 years of age have come to represent 83% of the Canadian population. Unless we witness a colossal baby boom in the next few years, a sizable portion of the workforce 25 years from now will consist of people who are currently employed. If the present situation is maintained (and there is no reason to believe that it will not), the importance of adult education resources is likely to increase, rather than decline in the future. Underlying the growing interest in educational resources is the widespread notion that the nation's economic performance is somehow linked to education and training. That idea is embodied in the theory of Human Capital, according to which the knowledge and skills found in the workforce represent valuable resources for the market. Perhaps the most well known proponent of the Human Capital Theory is the Nobel prize winning economist T. W. Schultz (1961; 1981). In the sixties, dissenting with then popular doomsday scenarios proposed by scientific groups such as the Club of Rome, Schultz heralded the advent of a new age in economics. He objected to the Malthusian view of ever diminishing resources, and of a world doomed for lack of unlimited natural capital. He did not subscribe to the entropic view of human economics, where human survival was linked the direct exploitation of the finite resources of the natural world. Instead, Schultz (1981) proposed that the key to economic growth lay in the "quality of the population" that comprised the economic unit. In Schultz's view, human beings themselves represent the greatest potential for economic prosperity.