Undergraduate financial knowledge and the role of financial education programming

Abstract

College is an increasingly risky investment for students due to increased cost burden placed on students and their families and the associated student debt. In response, colleges and universities have increased their financial education programming hoping to mitigate some of the deleterious effects of this change. Therefore, we conducted an exploratory analysis of financial education programming by examining its relationship with financial knowledge. After holding other characteristics constant, we found little efficacy of many types of financial education programming. The single program with a significant and positive relationship was student loan counseling, which had a small to trivial influence on financial knowledge. Consequently, colleges and universities should reevaluate their financial education efforts to examine if these resources are being spent wisely.