Surviving, and Maybe Thriving, on Vouchers

The Workforce Investment Act (WIA), the new law restructuring the nation's workforce development system, marks a significant change for job seekers and the practitioners who serve them. Under WIA, eligible job seekers will be issued Individual Training Accounts (ITAs), or vouchers, that can be used to enter training programs from a state-approved list. Whether vouchers will meet the goal of improving the quality of training will not be known for some time. However, the impact on organizations that serve job seekers will be immediate. Surviving, and Maybe Thriving, on Vouchers offers workforce development practitioners critical lessons about how they can adapt to this new environment, based on the experiences of organizations in jurisdictions that are already relying on vouchers