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learn$ave Project: Final Reportaccounts for their civil service employees. Some pilotswere available to all agency staff while others were targetedto workers with particular skill profiles, particularoccupational categories or certain levels of prior education.While potentially very large given the size of the U.S.civil service workforce, the pilots in fact only saw 6,000accounts opened. As with the European examples discussedabove, the U.S. government pilot did not generallyask employees to make personal financial contributions(one exception was the pilot at the U.S. Department ofDefence that paid 75 per cent of eligible tuition fees butrequired participants to cover the remaining 25 per cent).Moreover, in many cases, financial contributions were noteven paid by the sponsoring employer. Across the pilots,some employers used a dedicated source of funds tooffer training vouchers to employees while others had nobudget and offered only paid time off to employees to takepart in free or low-cost training opportunities. Accordingto the U.S. Office of Personnel Management (2001) andPublic Policy Associates (2006), the pilots found thatsignificant marketing and outreach efforts were neededto recruit employees into the programs, that very few ofthe participating employees were in low-income brackets(either individually or as members of a low-incomehousehold), and that the link to the employers’ own goalswas often unclear.The CAEL LiLA project ran from 2001 to 2007 as a demonstrationof learning accounts in partnership with 80employers of various sizes (range of 3 employees to 5,500employees), in 3 U.S. cities and across several differentindustrial sectors. The 80 participating employers wereeach assigned to a comparison or a program group (43in the comparison group and 37 in the program group).Participating employers allowed CAEL to give on-site toemployees information on the process to take advantageof a LiLa account and allowed the pilot accounts to beavailable to all of their employees, regardless of income,education or skill level. This latter decision was takento avoid stigmatizing employees while at the same timeusing employer recruitment to try to reach low-wage andlow-skilled workers. Both employees and employers wereexpected to contribute to the account and CAEL in turnmatched these contributions at a 1:1 rate to a maximumof (U.S.) $1,000 so that accountholders could accumulateup $2,000 per year for training purposes. Employees wereexpected to contribute at least (U.S.) $120 in a year to beeligible to receive both the employer and CAEL matchbut could not contribute more than (U.S.) $500 per yearto their own LiLa account. These amounts were annualand employees were able to save again and accumulatemore LiLa account benefits following a cash-out in aprevious year. The funds (matched and unmatched) wereto be used for only career-related training and educationincluding certain supports to learning such as thepurchase of a personal computer or educational supplies,but excluding other related costs such a transportationand childcare expenses. Each participating employeewas expected to develop a personal learning plan inconsultation with his or her employer, giving participatingemployers some assurance that they would see a returnon their investment in employee education.According to a 2006 evaluation conducted by PublicPolicy Associates (2006), average quarterly depositsinto the LiLa accounts were, depending on the sector,between (U.S.) $52 and (U.S.) $85, well above the requiredminimum of $120 annually. The evaluation also foundthat participating employees responded very strongly tothe offer of career counselling services and that accountholderswere very likely to attribute their decisionto take training to their LiLa account experience and,relative to the comparison group without LiLa accounts,were more likely to report an intention to take furthertraining following the pilot program. However, as pointedout, it was the higher-earnings employees who intendedto participate in them. The evaluation found that therewas a general trend towards increases in both personaland household income among accountholders over theduration of the pilot but the source of the increase wasnot entirely clear since there was only uneven evidencefor any increase in account holders’ employment wages.Finally the evaluation concluded that there was evidencethat employees with accounts did in fact participate inmore training than those without and that, despite employerconcerns, there was little evidence of any increasesin employee turnover. Previously, some employers hadworried that by investing in the skills of their employees,they would see an increase in attrition and turnover asbetter skilled employees left to find better pay for theirnew level of skill.ConclusionBased on the review of domestic practice in Canada andexperience with so-called learning accounts for adultsabroad, it is clear that no prior pilot or program has yettried to use a matched savings instrument to try to boostparticipation in training and education among adults. Infact, only one prior pilot can be truly said to have used amatched savings instrument (the CAEL pilot) and in thatcase the three-party structure (employee/employer/CAEL) meant that the orientation and priorities of theprogram model were very different (employment-centric)from learn$ave’s. If savings-based instruments have anypromise as adult education and training policy tools,then they need to be tried and rigorously tested in awide range of settings and structures. Caution shouldbe exercised in drawing conclusions from voucher-likeSocial Research and Demonstration Corporation Appendix A | 117