Check your bank statements, Jumbos - money skills aren't just for Harvard MBAs anymore.
Financial awareness is an increasingly necessary component of entrance into the post-college world, and a dichotomy is emerging between those students driven to learn finance and those whose knowledge of money ends when their wallets close.
Why should college students, whose typical exchange of money consists of purchasing latt?©s from Starbucks, be overly concerned with the management of finances? According to American Studies and Entrepreneurial Leadership Studies Lecturer John Hodgman, obtaining such financial management skills is not only valuable - it is a responsibility and duty for every student, regardless of major or career ambitions.
"College graduates are and should be expected to be leaders in our society," Hodgman said. "So if college graduates can't figure out and explain financial concepts, how is the poor person working in the factory or working in a service organization or an immigrant family - how are they ever going to understand? It keeps everybody in the dark."
Timothy Stratford, a local financial services professional who teaches the Experimental College course "Understanding the Stock Market," agreed with Hodgman, noted larger social implications of financial awareness for college graduates.
"There's more wealth than ever before, but it's distributed further and further apart," he said. "Millionaires aren't enough - now it's billionaires ... [the wealth] is not distributed, and it could be catastrophic for society."
Hodgman compared the need to understand money with the need to establish any other academic knowledge base.
"Even as a freshman, if you went out to some event next week, and somebody asks you, 'What's the difference between prose and poetry?' and you couldn't explain it, you'd be embarrassed," he said. "Well, when it comes to financial information, that's where so many students are these days. They can't differentiate at even that basic a level between, for example, what a stock is versus a bond."
Basic knowledge of simple financial concepts should not be impeded by the intimidating nature of money in America, according to Stratford. "You're as intelligent, no matter what you do, as anybody on Wall Street," he said.
According to junior and Young Entrepreneurs at Tufts (YET) president Jonathan Katz, the number of students interested in finance and business venturing is growing almost as rapidly as those who aren't, particularly at Tufts.
"There are more students coming into Tufts who are interested in entrepreneurship," he said. "It's amazing that I'll talk to first semester freshmen who want to have an active role in YET, or they want to explore starting a business."
Katz recalls his freshman experience with YET, when the club was largely composed of male upperclassmen economics majors. Now, he said, women and men are equally represented in the club and economics majors are diluted with an array of students from different disciplines.
Over the course of a decade, Stratford has also noticed an increase in students motivated to learn about investing and finances.
"When [Understanding the Stock Market] was offered ... [the economics department] claimed it was, 'a fad, a market fad.' The course never went away, and ironically, since that time, the number of students who are economics majors here at Tufts has exploded," Stratford said. "The interest is at its highest level because people see people making money instantly."
Nationally, there is reason for the trend. According to a report by the National Association of Colleges and Employers, economic and finance graduates saw an 11 percent increase in starting salaries offered to them in 2006.
But while more students are becoming interested in money-related majors, financial knowledge among liberal arts college students may still be limited to just a particular faction, albeit growing, of motivated financial buffs.
Senior and psychology major Caitlin Sheehan admitted to having less financial savvy than she'd like. "[My knowledge] is very, very low," she said.
Sheehan also expressed fear over the idea of having to manage her money while paying for graduate school. "I got accepted to graduate school, and I don't know how I'm going to pay," she said. "That's definitely a big issue."
Stratford agreed that the high cost of education is a huge motivating factor for students to learn about money and secure financial futures for themselves. "Students want to make money sooner because of the expense that you guys pay to go to school," he said. "You're all of a sudden in debt, and you're looking for the quickest way out of that."
But what prevents the financially ignorant from at least learning the basics? Katz said there may be a variety of factors that discourage students from learning about money management.
"Some of it - in terms of greed - [students might say,] 'I want to be the starving artist and I just want to do what I like. I don't care about money,'" he said. "Some of it might be no interest - 'I want to be an academic; if I need money, I'll write a grant proposal, and that's that.'"
For Katz and many of his fellow YET members, money is also essential to social change.
"Yes, there are many people who want money," he said. "You'll find that anywhere; that's the American dream," he said. "Likewise, there are some people who want money so that they can give it back."
Katz also noted a necessity to incorporate public service with finance.
"Yes, there's a lot of sweat that you can put into going out to an underdeveloped country and helping them," he said. "But then you have to look, 'Well, how do I get to the underdeveloped country? How do I get the tools to provide for them?'"
