Growing up, how often I wished that my father were the director of a chocolate factory instead of a lawyer-what possibilities! I could have had all the chocolate I wanted and kept my friends supplied, which would have radically enlarged the circle of the latter. Nowadays such privileges are known as fringe benefits. Many firms, who aspire to being good employers and hope to bind their employees to the company, offer such favours. In some cases, own products are sold with special prices for employees. At Siemens, for example, employees can buy Siemens vacuum cleaners at discount prices in the company shop.

Without a doubt, the ETH Zurich belongs in the league of top technical universities and, as such, is not without its own aspirations. What fringe benefits accrue to workers at the ETH? The "products" of the ETH are research results, education and highly qualified graduates. Obviously, the first and last of these three products can hardly be harvested by everyone. True, researchers sometimes manage to add a weekend's sightseeing at the end of a conference or students and staff can buy a laptop in the Neptune shop. Nor must we forget that the high reputation of the ETH often serves to open doors, a not-to-be-underestimated perk when it comes to achieving professional success.

Bernhard Plattner, ETH Professor at the Computer Engineering and Networks Laboratory and Head of the programme of ETH World.

As far as the second "product" is concerned, the ETH offers its staff a very real fringe benefit in the form of further education, free and at one's place of work.

Strange though it may seem, not many people take advantage of this possibility. For my part, I have never sat in on a colleague's lecture or class with the goal of learning something. Nor have I ever seen a colleague sitting among the students in my classes. Not that I know all there is to know. I am sure I could profit from a good lecture, whether of a general or more specialist nature.

Why isn't this fringe benefit more widely claimed? There might be a number of reasons; lack of time, the necessity of keeping up in one's own area and taking part in related events etc. But is that the whole reason? It really shouldn't be so difficult. If I wanted to sit in on a lecture, I could just mingle with the students and enter the class. In practice, however, it would be expected of me that I ask the lecturer for permission beforehand. A formal nicety?

It seems to be part of our culture, not to make use of the huge on-going, lifelong learning potential that lies at our own doorstep. I do not doubt that this would be useful and would lead to a richer networking base. How could a greater readiness to participate in in-house further education be fostered? By making it mandatory? By introducing credits for professors that they could show when up for re-appointment? Or an approval system that would reward further education, which lies outside one's own narrow specialist field? No, none of these measures offer a feasible solution.

Perhaps it's simply more attractive to get 100 francs off the price of a vacuum cleaner than to get free access to a top-quality lecture with a market value of 1,000 francs or more. Including credits.