A university advocacy group is recommending adding yet another general-education requirement for graduation. This new requirement would focus on personal finances, since college students often need help learning about problems such as managing debt.
While managing personal finances is important, this should not become a new graduation requirement.
Every class on campus offers something that could be extremely valuable to students-but that doesn’t mean we should start requiring every student to take every class on campus. We need to stop the trend of adding class after class to the list of requirements students need to fulfill before graduation just because this professor or that student thinks it would be a good idea.
Furthermore, there are other issues that could be more thoroughly covered in general-education requirements.
In the past, we have suggested adjusting the current diversity requirement to more comprehensively expose students to multicultural and gender issues.
The fact is, there are very few places and settings in a person’s life where questions about religious differences and ethnic issues can be addressed-and a college campus is one of them.
Rather than force students to learn about interest rates, we should be encouraging them to engage in open discussion about social issues-not just because they are important, but because this also might be their last chance to do so in an open forum.
Individuals can learn about personal finances whenever, from whomever. Parents, a banker, even a book purchased at Barnes and Noble can teach students all they need to know about how to balance a checkbook and get out of credit card debt.
Naturally, this instruction can be supplemented by classes taken at the U-and students who wish to learn more than what is commonly offered in daily life are free to sign up for finance classes, or even major in business.
While learning how to avoid bankruptcy and planning for retirement are clearly worthy endeavors, this knowledge can be pursued by anyone at any stage of life.
A university setting, on the other hand, should be used to encourage students to reach higher, to question their assumptions and to strengthen their values and convictions. We should take advantage of the unique atmosphere of a college campus, and not just use it to learn about what should be common sense.
After all, students will have the rest of their lives to wonder, “How can I get a mortgage?”