Personal Finance Games for College Students Deliver Self Esteem and Financial Confidence

The following story shows how we can help you create a custom college financial education program.

When Lyndsay graduated from college, she realized that she had received zero education in financial literacy. She considered how it might have changed her life for the better. Fresh out of college, deeply in debt with no job, she had to do something help other college students avoid her predicament.

Her local library and online publications provided recent financial literacy research that showed the absence of high school and college financial education. An online poll of college students left no doubt as to their awareness of the problem and their desire to learn this critical skillset.

Lyndsay’s first step was to determine how deeply her students would need to understand personal finance. She wanted them to gain strategic thinking skills about their finances. If they only achieved an understanding of the concepts, they would still have obtained a powerful base of knowledge to start their adult lives. Lyndsay was sure that the limited time she had for the course would be sufficient to give them the head start they needed to avoid early financial disaster.

Designing a Financial Education Delivery System

How was Lyndsay going to deliver the personal finance games for college students? It had to unfold along a set timeline, to keep them all learning at the same healthy pace. They needed to stay challenged while not becoming overwhelmed, a delicate balance that a set timeline would strive to maintain. She wanted a live, financial literacy seminar, format because the personal interaction offered more support than purely online methods.

Lyndsay’s next step was to decide on the subject her financial games would teach. She reasoned that college students needed to know how to manage their college loan and plan a career. They would also need a basic understanding of budgeting. Given the limited time, students would be able to reach strategic thinking if she stuck to these topics that were critical to these pre-adults at this time in their lives.

Important Aspects of the Curriculum

Lyndsay thought about the most important aspects of her program. The personal finance games for college students needed to meet core financial education standards, so that her program would carry some weight with school officials. They needed to be engaging and directly applicable to their lives and the financial realities that would soon confront them. The program needed scaffolding to guide them along a set path of learning that was based on the evidence of success.

Lyndsay might get her financial education certification someday, but for now she’d leave that possibility open. To make this program a success, she would need to find a Certified Financial Education Instructor who was adept at teaching personal finance in schools and reaching college students on their level to begin coaxing them into adopting better financial attitudes and behavior. With the help of the NFEC, she found the perfect person who was local and had a proven track record with personal finance games for college students.

Results of Lyndsay’s Financial Education Program

Lyndsay was very happy that 49 college students signed up to learn from her personal finance games. She was even more thrilled at the 89% success rate, with 44 of them completing the course. What’s more, they all wanted to learn more about personal finance.

She compiled the data into a format that would clearly show the success of her program. She created a presentation for potential investors and community policy-makers.