College savings plans are more useful and relevant than ever, but most Americans are still unfamiliar with them.

According to the 2017 edition of St. Louis-based Edward Jones’ annual “529 Plan Awareness Survey,” just 32 percent of Americans can correctly identify a 529 plan as an option for saving for college expenses. Awareness of 529s increased by 4 percentage points from 28 percent in 2016, reversing a decline in awareness from 2015 to 2016.

“When we asked the same group if they thought getting a college degree was important, about 95 percent of them said yes,” says Kyle Andersen, principal with Edward Jones. “People understand the importance of the issue, but still only 30 percent of them are aware of one of the best tools to save for higher education.”

The low levels of awareness come 21 years after the tax-advantaged college investment accounts were first offered, and follow several years of concerted marketing efforts on the part of states and 529 sponsors.

As part of its efforts to drive awareness about the accounts, the Lexington, Ky.-based College Savings Plans Network (CSPN) is kicking off 529 Day celebrations across the U.S.

“We need to make advisors more aware of the vehicles out there for saving for college, and there’s no better way to accomplish that than education,” says Young Boozer, the state treasurer of Alabama and CSPN’s chairman. “We’re working on a national plan to increase awareness. We’re looking at every avenue to get the word out there.”

States are responsible for originating and maintaining 529 savings plans—thus the plans vary from state to state and don’t have a single account structure. Some states tend to be internally focused and design plans to serve their residents, while others look nationally.

Boozer says that the fractured, less-uniform nature of 529 accounts may actually help CSPN spread awareness of their existence and usefulness.

“The combination of local efforts at the state level, and efforts by national programs like CSPN should create an adequate, multi-layered effort to advertise, market and promote these plans,” says Boozer. “We acknowledge that, based on these numbers, we obviously need to do better.”

Edward Jones found that awareness of 529 plans differed by generation. Members of Generation X, aged 35 to 52, were the most likely to identify 529s correctly. Forty-seven percent knew what one was, while only 30 percent of millennials (those aged 18 to 34) knew and only 29 percent of respondents older than 52 knew.

Ric Edelman, the chairman and founder of Edelman Financial Services, agreed that education was the best way to raise awareness of 529s, but argued that states and national organizations should target very specific venues: primary and secondary schools.

“Today, kids talk about college in elementary school,” says Edelman. “Parents are enrolling their children in preschool with an eye towards college. They’re already focusing on college at that age without any understanding of how to best save for it.”

Americans’ low awareness of 529s leaves them using taxable investment accounts or cash vehicles to cover educational expenses. Conducted in May, the Edward Jones survey found that savings accounts were the most popular vehicle for education savings, used by 42 percent of its 1,009 respondents. Scholarships and federal/state financial aid were also commonly used, each named by more than one-third of participants. Only 14 percent of the survey’s participants said that they were using 529 plans.

A recent study from TIAA finds even higher use of personal savings: Across all generations, savings accounts are the primary vehicle for setting aside education money, used by 62 percent of the respondents. Only 16 percent of the parents in TIAA’s survey used 529 accounts.

Millennials, the generation most likely to start saving for a child’s education in 2017, are also the most likely to use a personal savings account for those savings, according to Edward Jones.

“They are saving, they have a grasp on the importance of saving for education as well as retirement, but they’re not investing,” says Andersen. “Our viewpoint is that they should be doing both, and they should be using tax-advantaged accounts to do so.”

TIAA also found that millennials start earlier than their predecessors. Approximately one in three millennial respondents started saving at a child’s birth for education, compared with one in four respondents from Generation X and the baby boomers.

According to TIAA, 90 percent of Americans believe that parents should save for their children’s education, but many start too late. While 63 percent of TIAA’s respondents believed that saving for college education should start at a student’s birth, only 26 percent of parents start this early.

“We’re encouraged that younger people are starting to save early, but they lose most of the advantages of an early start when they use savings accounts,” says Boozer. “What good is saving for 18 years if the investment never grows? They’re losing money to inflation.”

While 80 percent of TIAA’s respondents said parents should start saving before their child turns 6 years old, only 46 percent begin saving before that age.

Edelman says that Americans should be encouraged to take a more holistic approach to education planning and saving, particularly as demands on the workforce shift.

“Those who are using 529 plans are probably saving too much with too narrow a focus,” says Edelman. “They’re fixated on their child’s bachelor’s degree, when what they should be focusing on is not so much the importance of a college degree, which becomes less and less important over time, but instead focus on lifelong learning.”

The 529 account is versatile, in that it can be transferred between family members if the cost of the original beneficiary’s education does not exhaust its assets.

Baby boomers and Generation Xers could still use the 529 assets intended for their children, then, if they wanted to pursue a new profession or an encore career.

“It’s not only for the kids of clients, but for the clients themselves,” says Andersen. “If childless adults plan on going back to school, they can certainly establish the accounts themselves as long as they’re used for post-secondary education.”

In some ways, Edelman believes that 529s are insufficient to meet the educational needs of Americans going forward—since they’re restricted to accredited post-secondary institutions, they don’t cover many vehicles for continuous and lifelong learning like online courses, experiential education and training.

Because of the rapid advance of technology and the cultural and lifestyle changes that are occurring around it, Edelman says that educational savings need to be more than just a 529 account. Thus, millennials are right, in part, that some education savings should be in taxable accounts. Edelman uses taxable vehicles deemed “L-3” accounts to help households save for education that may not be covered by a 529.

“Half of what a freshman learns in their science classes is obsolete by their junior year,” says Edelman. “A 529 is limited to college expenses, but we know lifelong learning happens outside the formal setting. The question, then, is whether you should be saving exclusively within a 529.”

The best cure for millennials’ love for cash savings accounts is more education, says Edelman, who advocates for financial education to be offered at every level within schools.

Education saving should be looked at as a multi-generational, long-term investment, said Edelman, requiring more aggressive solutions than what’s available in many 529 plans. Moving forward, household education planning needs a completely new kind of financial plan, says Edelman.

“It changes the time line for educational saving, but allocation will depend on the time line for each client,” says Edelman. “If [assets in an L-3 account] will not be touched for 30 to 40 years, the money would need to be in equities for the vast majority of time. It looks significantly different from the life cycle or target-date funds you see in 529 accounts, where assets shift dramatically from equity to bonds around the time the beneficiary turns 18.”