CHS, like most schools, offers an economics class that is required for students to take prior to graduation. While it, at first, may seem unnecessary to dedicate a full required class to understanding economics and finance, it actually has a lot of benefits: it prepares students for managing their finances in both college and their longer-lasting adult life. The issue is that many students take this class off campus and don’t learn necessary financial strategies, and the students that take AP Macro Economics don’t learn individual solutions to manage their finances.
School is supposed to prepare students for adult life, but a lack of knowledge in financial literacy tampers with that. In a study by K12, it was found that 59% of high school graduates felt that they were not prepared to deal with financial concepts such as credit, taxes, and insurance, and on a list of topics students wish was taught to them, it was even found that the top five were all dedicated to financial literacy in some way. This goes to show that lack of financial literacy in schools is making young adults much less prepared for adult life than they could be.
Speaking of young adults, this lack of knowledge most often comes into effect when students enter college, as that is where most people begin having more financial responsibilities such as loaning money and paying for necessities like food and rent. Student loans are especially important, as depending on how college students handle their loans they could have debt for a long period of their life. Over 42 million college students are in debt with a combined total of $1.833 trillion, further exemplifying the need for students to learn how to better manage their finances and loans before college.
This issue becomes even more apparent when the consequences of many adults not knowing how to manage their finances begins to rear its head. The 2021 National Financial Capabilities Survey concluded that people with lower financial literacy were more likely to often make poor financial decisions while people with higher levels of education in finance were found to make better decisions regarding their income and current financial status. This makes it clear that students need a stable class in personal economics to further prepare them for making decisions regarding their finances.
Some people, though, are actually against making financial literacy a mandatory class in schools, as they believe that the information students receive will likely not be fully maintained: economics, after all, is a complicated subject, and it is understandable that some students may have a hard time retaining all of that information.
This, however, is unfounded. This argument could be made for really any subject that is taught by school. While it is teachers’ jobs to teach well and support their students, it is ultimately up to the students themselves if they wish to really try and retain the information that they’re learning, not their teachers or school. Instead, schools should be held accountable for making sure that their students are prepared for their adult life, and teaching these students about financial literacy is a great way to support that.
Fortunately, California, following suit with 29 other U.S. states, has recently signed a bill to require a class in financial literacy to graduate from high school that will come into effect in 2030. While literacy in finance has been an issue for a while, the increase in required financial literacy classes will hopefully circumvent this issue. Of course, there are still a good number of states that don’t require any kind of financial literacy class, but with patience, there may eventually be a time where young adults can live their life without worrying about managing finances on top of all their other responsibilities.
