Federal Govt. Recommends Colleges Require Financial Literacy Courses
“report estimates that more than 43 million individuals in the U.S. collectively owe more than $1.5 trillion in student loan debt”
The idea is that this may help students not get crushed under debt. It’s an outstanding suggestion.
Campus Reform reports:
Fed gov’t report to colleges: Require financial literacy courses to slow student loan crisis
A multi-agency government commission has released a report recommending colleges offer mandatory financial literacy programs to educate students on loans and college debt.
The report, “Best Practices for Financial Literacy and Education at Institutions of Higher Education,” was produced by the U.S. Financial Literacy and Education Commission (FLEC). The commission is comprised of 23 government departments, including the departments of Treasury, Labor, Education, Defense, and the White House Domestic Policy Council.
The report estimates that more than 43 million individuals in the U.S. collectively owe more than $1.5 trillion in student loan debt.
“Helping students and their families avoid the pitfalls associated with financing higher education, and empowering them to make optimal financial choices, should be a priority of all institutions of higher education,” the report introduction states. “In order to provide guidance to these institutions, this report establishes best practices for teaching financial literacy and providing information about making financial decisions.”
In addition to suggesting mandatory financial literacy courses, the report officially recommends the integration of financial literacy into the core curriculum of universities, peer educators of financial literacy to be incorporated in colleges, as well as encouraging institutions to communicate financial information more frequently to students.
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Comments
This has no chance of gaining any traction in the colleges. They WANT fiscally stupid students who to take out all tye loans they can get. The problem is the amount of loan money available to students who show now returns on the investments of those loans.
Government already has considerable control over the high school curriculum, and requires courses of all sorts. More required stuff should be added there, where it might do some good.
Showing college students that they made expensive blunders by going to college where Marxist professors can lecture them about how they already made expensive blunders by going there at all seems an inefficient way to do anything useful. When bungling money management, an attack of basic sense earlier is more useful than later. And that means high school, not college when the damage has already been done.
As Tom said, isn’t doing it in college a little late? “Here, let us present a course that will let you know just how badly you’ve screwed yourself for the next 30 years or so”.
Makes much more sense to do it in high school when they’re making these decisions.
Hmm. The phrase “offer mandatory” annoys me for some reason.
I learned how to calculate interest in 5th grade arithmetic class;
I learned the meaning of the word ‘borrow’ the first time I tried to keep another kid’s toy;
I learned the meaning of ‘personal responsibility’ the first time I tried to lie to my parents.
To make college courses out these is a savage indictment against the Leftist education model.