The American Dream has become more than simply bettering a person’s life, it involves utilizing money in efficient ways to create a comfortable place in society.
With a heavy reliance on knowing how to pay taxes, invest, buy insurance, plan for retirement, apply for loans and maintain good credit, the preparation for adult life should be more comprehensive.
This is an aspect that is overlooked by the American education system. With the exception of business majors, most students will not learn these life skills during their time at a university. Students graduate college and enter the workforce with no knowledge of financial planning.
Colleges should teach all students these important skills. Most students go to college with the assumption that it will be the final four years of preparation before monetary responsibility sets in. However, instead of being taught to handle real world problems, their time is wasted on unnecessary and irrelevant general education courses.
Financial planning is not a skill that people can generally learn on their own, at least not without an abundance errors along the way. When students graduate college, they are likely going to get a job and start filing taxes as an individual. Going into a job without knowing these skills could lead to poor budgeting and saving habits.
I think that Chico State should replace a couple of their general education requirements with financial planning and life skills classes. Several students that I have met feel that general education courses like Arts and Humanities are unnecessary and they would rather have useful and applicable classes.
Undergraduates at Chico State are required to take 48 units of general education classes but a majority of these classes will not be useful in the student’s life. Rather than waste students time with random art, history and philosophy classes, the school should teach them valuable information.
If all students were to learn life skills, it would drastically increase their chances to be more successful. Through students developing applicable skills in their courses, they could understand the importance of investing and saving and not have to hire tax assistance companies for help.
These life skills courses could be broken into two classes. One could pertain to the importance of taxes to the economy and the other could be about personal finance like credit scores, retirement planning, insurance and mortgages. I think that if these classes were offered, students should be able to substitute them for any of the required general education course.
Financial life skills are only taught in the College of Business. These skills are a vital part of modern life and should be taught to more than just business students. If these classes replaced general education course, students would be more prepared for life after college.
Carson Predovich can be reached at [email protected] or @cpredo120 on Twitter.
