YOUR MONEY

The Wisdom of Reading, Writing and Financial Literacy

Summary: College students often enter the real world with little knowledge of financial basics. Champlain College is trying to correct that.

By RON LIEBER
Published: January 7, 2011, New York Times

BURLINGTON, Vt. - One of the more difficult questions of the mortgage meltdown was just how much blame individuals should take for signing up for loans they didn't understand.

Yes, many mortgage brokers steered people into harmful products. All sorts of banks, meanwhile, paid the brokers more when they put borrowers into subprime loans, and those same lenders simultaneously abandoned many of their underwriting standards.

But who is responsible that many borrowers didn't understand the terms that were buried in the documents they were signing? Is it their fault that they did not know, for instance, that their credit scores might have made them eligible for better terms on a fixed-rate loan?

An education is one of the best defenses against financial flimflam, but many students never learn the kinds of things that can help. Only a handful of states require schools to teach basic personal finance, and it's often of the old-fashioned, balancing-the-checkbook variety. Also, it tends to come at a stage in life when students are years away from putting the knowledge to practical use.

So I was heartened to hear about Champlain College here, which recently started requiring all undergraduates to attend two sessions in financial literacy. And I decided to sit in to see what I could learn. Read the full story.

Center for Financial Literacy at Champlain College
Life Experience and Action Dimension at Champlain