University must work to ameliorate financial cluelessness for graduating students

The class of 2015 is 33 days away from graduation and we are about to enter the “real world.”

Suddenly, all the responsibilities our parents have been taking care of, like filing our taxes on time and paying for insurance, will be on us. For some of us, this will be the first time we negotiate a contract, sign up for medical and dental insurance or hear of a 401K. I’ll be the first to admit that I’m scared and few classes, if any, give an indication of what’s to come.

The past four years were supposed to give us skills we would be able to apply in the workplace. For numbers-based majors, these skills may be more quantifiable, but on May 17 it will not matter if our diplomas say BA or BS. We can discuss Voltaire and Kant, but if someone asked us which tax bracket we fall into, most of us wouldn’t know. This by no means applies to all 1,300+ students in the Class of 2015, but the number of times I’ve heard "I forgot to pay my credit card bill" or "it’s ok, the overdraft fee is only $25," makes me very nervous. All of this preparation, these four years of digging ourselves deeper into debt, will not be particularly helpful when we forget to transfer our 401k when we leave a place of employment. 

Tufts has long been using the excuse of being a liberal arts institution to end discussions about establishing a business school or pursuing other endeavors some have deemed “more practical,” but that debate is neither here nor there. A personal finance course, taught by engaging professors who would make bank reconciliation seem fun, is not a departure from the liberal arts. It would seem like a natural distributional requirement for any university hoping its students leave with pleasant memories and balanced check books. 

I urge our administration, donors and the Class of 2015 to consider what can be done to ameliorate this cycle of cluelessness so many face. It is more than just beneficial to offer a course on personal finance, it is necessary. Only four states require personal finance to be a part of the public high school education, and only 17 require high school students to graduate with some concept of money management. Most of us come to Tufts without even a base knowledge financial literacy and leave overwhelmed by the amount of information lobbed at us by our first employers. Pushing for this component in our curriculum will benefit graduates, parents and the university alike. 

There is no easy solution to the systemic problem of financial literacy for college students. There is a host of apps and books on the subject, let alone our own parents who have been struggling and (hopefully) succeeding in keeping their finances in order. However, we’ve spent four years taking on a massive amount of debt, and it would be nice to know how to start paying it off.