Abstract: The paper will discuss the processes and issues encountered at a corporate university located within a securities firm. Prudential Securities Incorporated (PSI), a subsidiary of The Prudential Insurance Company of America, is composed of four divisions: Private Client Group, Capital Markets, Futures, and Investments. The Private Client Group, the largest of the four divisions, delivers training to its sales employees located in 43 states and 17 foreign countries via Prudential Securities University (PSU). Recently, PSU underwent a transformation to embrace blended learning to increase training effectiveness and the productivity of its branch personnel. Some of the topics discussed are: structure of a corporate e-learning administration, the implementation of a learning management system, the use of competency models to map employee development and learning paths, the creation of learning modules via learning objects, and the goal of blended learning.

1. Introduction to Corporate Universities
Corporate universities have been apart of corporate institutions since the 1950s. Led by companies with major technological investments and large R&D budgets, they were viewed primarily as a way to upgrade the skills and knowledge of their professional employees. The goal was to keep these elite workers abreast of new developments in the field. This was achieved by offering a wide array of classroom training courses (often times with a technical focus), and managerial certificate programs, in the belief that the workers would become more productive, and committed, to the company. As the concept of high-performing worker teams took hold, the universities expanded their focus to include training across the workforce, and not just the managerial class. By the mid 1980抯, there were over 400 businesses with some kind of 搖niversity, institute, or education center” in place.(1)
Approximately 1,600 corporate universities currently exist, and over 2,000 are expected by 2003. (2) The rise of corporate universities has become a major development in the e-learning industry. By 2010, if current trends continue, they will exceed the number of traditional U.S. universities. (3)
A major contributing factor to this phenomenal growth is the new information age fueled by the knowledge economy. The U.S. economy has undergone a fundamental transformation from manufacturing based to service and technology based industries. According to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, since 1950, manufacturing sector employment has fallen from 40% to fewer than 18%. Conversely, the service sector has grown over 20% in this 40 year span. This new knowledge-service economy has created an increasing demand for employees with higher skills and education. Wages for graduate or professional degrees rose to $58,837 in 1989 while high school graduates earned $20,504 per year. (4) Recent trends suggest this education gap is increasing with ever more demand for employ

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