As an employee, those perks annoy me because they promote checking boxes over actual learning. Oftentimes what you really need to learn is not available as a certification (the subject may be too new, or obscure, or only taught in person far away, etc) and you're better off learning by yourself, but then you won't get the same pay raise as your coworker, despite their course being mediocre and barely relevant to their job.

If your training was useful, it'll reflect itself on your work, no? Why do we need to reward it specifically?