Educating Students on Personal Finance
The National Endowment for Financial Education® (NEFE®) now provides an easily-implemented, unbiased and noncommercial financial education solution for colleges, universities and alumni associations to offer to their students. More than 60 schools across the country have signed up to use CashCourse , an online resource directed at college students and recent grads, since its inception in fall 2007.
Living away from the guidance of their parents during college is often a time when many students make unwise financial decisions due to lack of knowledge. They are confronted with easy access to credit cards, and spending decisions that go far beyond tuition, housing and food, including items such as spring break travel, fraternities and sororities, and the temptations of alcohol and gambling. Students also need financial tools for their transition to adulthood, including saving, investing, taxes and evaluating the financial aspects of job offers. Increasing concern over this issue has lead to the joint effort between NEFE and universities to fill in the missing gaps of financial knowledge that many college students have.
CashCourse offers unbiased content with no advertising and no connections to commercial entities. Colleges and universities can brand the program with their own logos and decide independently where to place it in their Web sites. Any college department can initiate CashCourse, including financial aid and student affairs offices, and alumni associations.
Among the schools using CashCourse are Bowling Green State University, University of Illinois Alumni Association, University of Iowa, Kansas State University, Michigan State University Alumni Association, Ohio State University, Rutgers, and University of Wisconsin Alumni Association. At the University of Wisconsin, Paula Bonner, president and CEO of the alumni association, and her colleagues have supported CashCourse since the start.
Additionally, Kate Seguin, assistant director of the Student Wellness Center at Ohio State University, observed a definite need among the students for CashCourse.
NEFE received input directly from college students to determine what information they would want to see. Representatives from the National Association of Student Financial Aid Administrators (NASFAA) also wrote or reviewed CashCourse content on financial aid.
For more information, visit cashcourse.org.