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learn$ave Project: Final Reportsecond and third measures in Table 7.1, the impacts aredriven mainly by the services and they are ambiguousand difficult to interpret. For example, at 54 months theproportion of participants in the learn$ave-plus groupagreeing that more education is needed to get a goodjob rose by 5.9 percentage points over the control group,but the proportion who strongly agreed with the samestatement actually decreased. Again, unlike at 54 months,the impact of the credits on the second measure wassignificant at 18 and 40 months.No impacts at 54 months were observed for the fourthattitudinal measure: tolerance or aversion towardsstudent debt. At earlier points in the study, learn$aveprogram group participants had become more willing totake on student debt to achieve educational goals thantheir control group counterparts (Table F.7.1 in AppendixF) but this change did not persist to the 54-month mark.It may have been that the attitudinal changes were relatedto the act of saving and planning ahead for education, keyactivities present in the earlier phases of the project.Impacts on education and training participationThe central goal of the learn$ave demonstration was toencourage participants to pursue further education. Thissection focuses on the extent to which this objective wasattained by the end of the study period, i.e., 54 monthsafter participants had enrolled in the project and sixmonths after they had completed the saving and cash outphases of the project. Note that, unlike the point-in-timeestimates of impacts on education attitudes presentedin the preceding section, the results presented here arein the form of incidence and mean dollar estimates ofeducation and training enrolment at any time during thefull 54-month period. Participants who had saved fastestand cashed out fastest (see Chapter 5) would have hadthe longest stretch of time to participate in educationbefore the 54th month. However, many participants tookthe full three years to save in the learn$ave IDA and thefull 12 months afterward to cash out their savings creditsso observations on education among these would belargely based on the six months following the last date tocash out their savings. The results in this section are foreducation stream participants only.Few real restrictions or guidelines were placed onparticipants in making the choice of an educational ortraining program or course. Participants in the learn$aveonlyand learn$ave-plus groups could pursue any formof education or training from an accredited institutionrecognized by the national Canada Student LoansProgram. Because tuition costs are not the only directfinancial costs to participants, learn$ave funds couldalso be used for so-called “supports to learning,” such asbooks, computers, child care services and disability supportsso long as the funds spent on these did not exceed50 per cent of the total savings and credits accumulatedin the IDA, to a maximum of $1,500.The first remarkable finding in the results presentedin Table 7.2 (data column 1) is that a very large majorityof the control group had participated in some educationor training over the 54 months. About 82 per cent of thecontrol group engaged in education or training of somekind, with about 56 per cent enrolled in courses as part ofa certificate or degree program and about 48 per cent inindividual courses (outside of a program). These proportionsare about two to three percentage points higherthan what they were at the 40-month mark (see TableF.7.2 in Appendix F for impacts over time).These enrolment rates are very high compared to theincidence of education and training among the workingage Canadian population as a whole (see Chapter 1).However, the learn$ave surveys, collectively, askedparticipants whether or not they had taken education ortraining since the time of enrolment in the project, i.e.,over a 54-month period, whereas the national trainingsurveys (from which statistics on the incidence of educationand training are derived) ask respondents to reporton education and training activities in the last 12 monthsonly. 1 Furthermore, as mentioned earlier, learn$aveparticipants in both the control and program groupswould have already been inclined toward education andtraining by virtue of having volunteered for a projectpromoting adult learning.The second important finding from Table 7.2 is that thelearn$ave matched saving credits had a positive impacton education and training enrolment and that this impactgrew over time. 2 At 54 months, the credits increasedparticipation rates in adult learning by 6.6 percentagepoints, a stronger showing than the 4.7 percentagepoints increase in educational participation at the40-month mark (Table F.7.2 in Appendix F). In contrastto experimental impacts on account activity and otherfinancial behaviour, the enhanced case management and1 Results from the Statistics Canada 2003 Adult Literacy and Life Skills Survey (ALL), partof the International Adult Literacy and Skills Survey, indicate that the rate of participationin adult education and training for medium/highly literate Canadians 16-65 years of agewas 50 per cent in 2002. However, the learn$ave results are for those at all literacylevels (though the fact that learn$ave participants tended to have a university educationsuggests they would be highly literate as well) and the ALL results cover those 16–17 yearsof age who might be expected to have lower adult learning participation rates (whereasthe learn$ave age criterion was 18 years and over). See Rubenson, Desjardins, and Yoon(2007) and Chapter 1 of this report.2 Note that all education and training the program group has taken is included in the impactestimate, regardless of whether or not the education or training was sponsored underlearn$ave.Social Research and Demonstration Corporation Chapter 7 | 81