The Learning Enterprise: Adult Learning Human Capital and Economic Development

In public policy and private management, America hungers for new ideas. Of the new ideas that have percolated into the agenda of public debate in recent days, I can think of none more provocative, more innovative, or more important than Lew Perelman's vision of  the "learning enterprise." Its central concept is a stirring challenge to conventional wisdom: Learning is the key capital-forming industry of the postindustrial economy.

...[T]his is a milestone statement in the national debate swirling about work and learning, and about education and the economy. I believe Perelman's concept of the learning enterprise will force a basic change in the terms of this debate. His report is destined to be controversial. But the new ideas it offers are just what America needs today.

-- Pat Choate, from the Introduction