But most employees looking to upgrade their skills and qualifications had to go back to school. Those who remained on the job while attending classes part time could get up to $5,250 annually in tax-free tuition reimbursement from their employer. Most large companies have maintained such programs for decades, but less than 1 percent of the work force participates.

Today, thanks to online technology, there has been stunning improvement in both the quantity and quality of learning opportunities available to employees. The largest platforms offer thousands of courses from more than 200 of the world’s best universities, as well as state-of-the-art content from top technology companies. Many Fortune 500 companies are testing the use of such courses to develop the skills of their employees, and a few have begun large-scale deployment, offering customized courses to help employees gain competency in emerging fields such as big data, machine learning, deep learning and the internet of things.

Less esoteric subjects — like digital marketing, project management, and managing people and teams — have also proved popular among employers. These courses typically cost less than 10 percent of what it would cost to take the same courses in a face-to-face, on-campus setting.

The need to invest in people has never been more pressing. Technology is both destroying and creating jobs, and with the advent of artificial intelligence and ever more powerful computational capacity to process almost unimaginably large data sets from millions of interconnected devices, the pace of creative destruction is likely to accelerate. McKinsey, the management consulting firm, estimates that roughly half of all jobs in the United States are at risk of automation in the next 20 years. If the country is to remain competitive, it needs to invest in people to ensure that the high-skill jobs remain here.