We all know that keeping your skills fresh and up to date not only benefit us as developers but also the companies we work for. It therefore makes perfect sense to me, and I am willing to bet you as well, that training is a good investment.
What is obvious to one person is not always obvious to someone else however. Does anybody have any ideas, metrics, vodoo or whatever to help me (and others) enlighten the companies we work for?
Give examples of the countless IT-companies that have gone down in flames because they lost their technological edge. I've always found this to be very effective.
Get a better boss :P
Mention how many other companies pay for training. I was specifically told by my boss in my interview that he sets aside a training budget for everyone on his staff because well-trained staff make him look better.
It's a good investment for you, too. If you go part way (e.g. don't necessarily expect them to pay both your time and the course fees, you might have to put a weekend or two into it) it may help. Also realize that from their point of view they don't want to train you to leave them for another job, and they also don't want to pay for things without a plausibly measurable benefit. That makes management often fall into credentialism out of proportion to worth, but it may make sense to them to be able to say we have N developers with credential X.
Do your homework. If you can give your management a clear plan of how this benefits them at least as much as it does you, I suspect they'll listen, anyway. Think of it as presenting a business case, and pitch it for MBA's, not programmers, so you won't trigger inherent distrust of "gee-whiz" stuff they don't care about.
If you work for an IT company where you need to enlighten management of the benefit of this, good luck!
For non-IT companies, a good argument for formal continued education is to ensure you're using technologies appropriately so you can save on maintenance cost (not rebuilding) and effectively grow with updates to the technology.
Many US States have training grants -- in Massachusetts, you can find it here:
http://mass.gov/wtf (I know -- awesome URL)
Anyway, they have some certificate programs that they subsidize -- I am sure you can find something similar all over the US.
I've finally got some specific training booked for myself in a couple of weeks, but it's been 4 years coming! In this case, I informally discussed the need for, and the benefits of, such training and it met with agreement. But nothing happened, so in the end, I made a formal (PRINCE2) business case highlighted the benefits of this training and the risks with not training. It embarrassed them into action, but even so, it took 18 months to be realised. (politics!)
I'd recommend producing a formal business case, using whatever procedures you use in-house. If nothing else, it will distinguish your needs from the usual whining that we are all prone to. If your bosses don't believe in formal training you probably wont get anywhere, but at least you will know.
Note: in many cases, there is nothing wrong with learning on the job!
Anyway, make a formal pitch and you will more likely get a formal answer, and you may well impress them a little with your mature approach into the bargain.
Some concrete advice:
First, ask at the right time. You should already know when your boss is working on putting together his budget for the year; if not, find out.
Next step: give him the business case he needs to take to his boss to get the training improved. The cost side should be easy enough to figure out (don't forget to budget for travel, hotel, etc.) but you need to be concrete about what the benefits will be to the organization.
Finally, don't forget to address the "time-away-from-the-office" factor; in some chronically understaffed organizations, the issue isn't the training budget as much as feeling they can spare the time. You need to clearly make the case that the increased efficiency post-training will more than make up for the time missed.
(One final hint: don't be afraid to use PowerPoint. Some bosses eat that stuff up.)
As one reply above says, give examples of companies that failed because they become obsolete.
Another technique is to have the guys record how much time they spend trying to figure out stuff that they could learn on training, or times when you (plural) have decided not to use free software/third party stuff because of the cost of figuring it out on your own.
You could also record amount of time spent trying to get answers to questions from publicly available sources, rather than having the training, and the proper textbooks (e.g. language standards).
Things that may help are:
Sounds too simple, but my answer is just "Ask"
A lot of times people assume they know what the answer will be and just avoid asking the question entirely.
From the floppy-haired boss, here are some reasons we might resist your requests for training - if you can answer these objections in advance you'll be well placed:
If you show that you understand these concerns, and have considered them, and that the training is still going to bring more value than cost (in time and money) then you have a good chance of getting your approval.
One strategy is to negotiate a training budget as part of your salary. You'll still have to justify the training when you request it, but you'll know in advance how much money you have to play with.
The problem with training is that it very costly A. because you have to pay for it. B. You have to pay for travel C. The opportunity cost of not working that's why you should consider computer based training like SharePoint-Training-Videos.com or some other online training.