Financial Services
Financial literacy plays a crucial role in empowering individuals to make well-informed decisions regarding their personal finances and resources. It encompasses a range of knowledge, skills, and tools, including effective management of personal finances, such as budgeting, saving, investing, and debt management. The absence of financial literacy can create challenges for individuals, such as elevated levels of debt, low credit scores, and insufficient savings for emergencies or retirement. Additionally, financial literacy facilitates prudent choices concerning borrowing and investing while helping individuals evade scams and fraud. Ultimately, financial literacy contributes to greater financial stability, enhancing the well-being of individuals, families, and communities.
The Role of HEI in Promoting Financial Literacy
There are several ways in which a university can promote financial literacy among its students. The institution can organize courses and workshops that focus on various aspects of financial literacy, such as budgeting, saving, investing, debt management, and retirement planning. Universities can also make a range of resources, including financial planning tools, online resources, and financial calculators, available to enable students to take control of their finances.
Universities can collaborate with financial institutions to offer financial literacy programs that cater to the specific needs of students. Additionally, the institution can provide access to financial aid counselors who can assist students in navigating the complexities of student loans and scholarships. Finally, the institution can integrate financial education into the curriculum of various courses, thereby underscoring the importance of financial literacy and its relevance to students' academic and career success.
What can Senior Leadership do?
Spread awareness about Financial Wellness
East Los Angeles College (ELAC) hired a coordinator to implement financial wellness programs for students and reorganized its student services to provide financial coaching and workshops. ELAC's Financial Wellness Center not only provides financial aid disbursement, but also expands financial wellness awareness across campus and with external partners who serve ELAC students.
Embed Financial literacy into the curriculum
North Arkansas College (NorthArk) integrated financial literacy into its College Success Skills course by aligning different lessons with financial challenges that students face. The curriculum was redesigned to teach budgeting and provide tools to track spending to ensure planning for the entire semester. Additionally, NorthArk trained faculty to integrate financial education into their classes.
Start a Coaching Program
North Arkansas College began offering financial coaching sessions during class time in coordination with faculty responsible for the College Success Skills course, as students were not signing up for individual coaching sessions. NorthArk staff also found that students were more receptive to financial education when lessons were distributed throughout the course curriculum rather than covered in a single unit.
Northern Virginia Community College made it mandatory for students to undergo financial coaching before disbursing funds from their Emergency Grant Fund. This led to finding alternative solutions by connecting students to other community resources such as housing assistance.
Facilitate Peer Education
Colleges have found that students are more likely to be influenced by their peers' experiences than by college staff's financial advice. However, due to the complexity of students' lives, there is often not enough time to create a sense of belonging on campus or connections with each other. Colleges have experimented with group workshops and coaching to create a sense of connectedness among students.
Offer Personalized help
ELAC recognized that addressing the diverse financial needs of individual community college students requires time, capacity, and quality interactions that result in successful behavior change. However, the program's success at ELAC was reinforced by word-of-mouth from students who received coaching and guidance through the financial wellness program, and now bring other students to the center for coaching and assistance.