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Honest question: should these courses be job training or education?

I also struggle with this but it's difficult to relay the value or amount of your education to most employers without some sort of credential attached to it.

If I read a pile of books on international development and the economics of foreign aid, participate in local group discussions, go to lectures, and contribute to online communities, how do I communicate that base level of knowledge to an employer?

If I could enroll in an EdX international development program that consists of a series of classes and projects and results in me receiving an EdX International Development Certificate then I have a short one line item that I can stick on a resume if I want to apply to work with a business in that realm.

Those two don't sound mutually exclusive to me.

Not always, and less so in technical fields, but there is a huge difference between a course like "Leveraging Sharepoint for HR Management" (job training) and "Philosophy of the Mind" (pure education). You can only put the former on a resume, but I find the latter to be more meaningful.

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