Are education and training always complements? Evidence from Thailand

This paper investigates the relationship between education and employer-provided training, both on-the-job and off-the-job, using a unique dataset drawn from a survey of Thai employees conducted in the summer of 2001. The authors find a negative and statistically significant relationship between educational attainment and on-the-job training (OJT) and a positive and statistically significant relationship between education and off-the-job training. Since the marginal monetary returns to OJT increase with education, the negative relationship between education and OJT suggests that the marginal costs of OJT are higher for the better educated, perhaps because the opportunity costs of the time spent receiving OJT increase with educational attainment.