Continuing education is a very diversified and complex social phenomenon. Since it is a necessary factor to the survival of advanced technological societies, the already strong demand will rapidly increase. The emphasis in the paper is on continuing engineering education by universities, but the approach is much broader, covering all forms of continuing education in a historical perspective. Objectives of continuing education as well as the course components are identifid as are the parties having an interest in it. Co-operation turnsout to be a crucial factor in the success of continuing enginehng education. The conclusion of the paper is that a v q eficient way to discover the necessary co-operation patterns is to look at the course components and at the pam'es involved.