Comments on: Why don’t schools teach personal finance? (Part 1)

By: Meg

Meg — Thu, 13 Mar 2008 01:34:30 +0000

Students will never be exposed to the in’s and out’s of credit cards because of terribly scary fact #6: colleges and universities make money from student credit cards. Why would colleges and universities teach students things that may change student behaviors, i.e. not get credit cards? Besides, in US culture, politics, religion and personal finance is taught by family. Even though someone can study religion, politics and finance in a school… for those who do not study these disciplines get their knowledge from family, i.e. how Mom and Dad did it.

By: kayla

kayla — Thu, 28 Dec 2006 00:17:57 +0000

I graduated from CSU where I actually took a class offered in personal finance. The thing for me, though, is I wish I could go back and take it! At the time, I wasn’t retaining information and was only looking for my “A.” Now I’m re-learning what I could have known from that class!

Thanks for your blog, Ramit. It is better than a personal finance class because I can do this in my own time, and come back to it when I forget things, too!

By: Santosh Iyengar

Santosh Iyengar — Thu, 27 Jul 2006 08:39:32 +0000

Our college has just begun to understand the importance of the awareness with regard to Personal Finance. We are planning to have session to mature students in this regard.

Thankyou
Ian

P.S. Probably Jeniffer should understand from the exercise that she conducted. How important this topic is. B’cos no one has listed this in the five things probably.

By: hypatia

hypatia — Sun, 23 Oct 2005 16:40:21 +0000

Well, Rob, I was taught CPR at my high school. That was in Newton, MA in the 1990’s. I thought every school did that.

By: Manu Bains

Manu Bains — Fri, 21 Oct 2005 21:58:44 +0000

Apparently even Supreme Court nominees could benefit from Ramit’s seminar. Here’s a psycho-financial analysis of Harriet Miers: http://www.slate.com/id/2128418/nav/tap1/

By: Rob La Gesse

Rob La Gesse — Fri, 21 Oct 2005 21:31:27 +0000

I agree that finance should be taught in school, and so should CPR. I can’t believe we can’t spare 20 hours of a child’s lifetime in the classroom to teach (and re-teach) something as important as CPR.

By: Jennifer

Jennifer — Fri, 21 Oct 2005 21:05:20 +0000

This is too much, R.

I’m a grad student too. In psych, no less. Social Psych.

I teach two sections of that lovely, wonderful, ever enjoyable one unit class “University 101.” If you’re not familiar, the goal of the class is to get unwilling freshmen to think critically about their education.

During the second class I gave students an excercise. They had 5 minutes to list “everything an educated person should know.”

This is what the list looked like:

History
Grammar
Great Works of Fiction
Multiculturalism

Since freshmen are still in NCLB victim mode, this is exactly what I expected.

So I tried to open their cage doors.

“But don’t you feel that to be educated means that you should develop skills that will help with the most pressing problems of our generations such as dealing with weight issues, preventing STDs, learning to invest for retirement and our children’s education, coping with credit card debt, being able to deal financially and emotionally with elderly parents, financing a home, enviornmentally, socially and economically sustainable living, etc.”

Here’s what they told me:

“It’s not worth it to learn those things in school. Those things are common sense. We’ll learn them on our own. Learning those things here aren’t worth our tuition dollars.”

Ramit, we’re creating our own hell.

By: Jordan Rule

Jordan Rule — Fri, 21 Oct 2005 19:20:54 +0000

Perhaps finance isn’t taught in college because professors aren’t that interested in it themselves. Finance is something most people end up learning on their own, whether they want to or not. Post-modern analysis of Wuthering Heights, on the other hand, generally isn’t something one just stumbles across in their daily routine.