Countless colleges offer personal finance courses to students. The problem many people are seeing is that these courses are not mandatory. They are there to take if the student wishes, or if he is planning to major in a finance-related degree. Knowing about money, budgeting, and personal finance shouldn’t be a choice. Every college student should be made to learn the subject.
The. U.S. Suffers a Poor Financial Literacy Rate
A study got conducted in 2015 by Standard & Poor’s Ratings Group. The United States ranked only 14th across the global for financial literally. The country earned only a 57% financial literacy rate altogether. With a score on the lower side, officials are realizing that more students need finance-related classes to help improve these numbers.
Student Loan Debt
Students are no strangers to debt. The student loan debt when attending college is something millions of young adults across the country have become familiar with in their university years. What many fail to realize is that student loans are second in terms of the amount of consumer debt behind mortgages. With such a significant impact on the debt our country has accumulated, you would think more people would be pushing to make classes in finance mandatory for all.
What’s more about student debt is that many millennials agree they don’t fully understand how the process works. They don’t know what to expect and when to pay things off until their statement tells them. Teaching more about this in school will help those people who need it understand the importance of paying it off on time and how the whole process works in the first place.
The Right Courses
Not just any personal finance course will do. Some focus on light topics that don’t matter much in today’s world. Sure some talk about budgeting and saving, but the real issues need to be discussed for students to learn how to truly handle their own finances in the real world. Questions about taxes, loans, mortgages, and investments should all get answered.
Financial literacy should be a primary focus at every college across the United States. To improve our financial literacy rates as a nation, the right finance courses need to become mandatory for all students. Just like you learn about the road signs and rules of the road before you can drive a car, you should learn about the essential steps to financial freedom.
