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Finance University comes to Charleston

CHARLESTON, W.Va. — Teachers from across the state are in Charleston this week attending the 15th annual Finance University.

Twenty-seven middle and high school teachers from 21 different West Virginia schools attended the four day course to learn how to effectively communicate topics such as student debt and personal finance to their students.

Dr. Naomi Boyd, Chair for the Department of Finance and an Associate Professor in the College of Business and Economics at West Virginia University, was one of many presenters at Finance University.

Boyd said the program is all about helping teachers to educate their students.

“Finance University is a financial literacy outreach program that we do for primary and secondary teachers in the state,” Boyd said. “It provides them with resources and education about topics related to financial literacy that they can then take back to their classrooms.”

Boyd said too often kids get to college without having any education in finance or debt and are more likely to make bad financial decisions as a result.

“I think it is important for college students to be educated in terms of credit cards, student loans, and things like that but it really needs to take place earlier, which is why this program is so vital,” Boyd said. “If we can get these kids when they are in middle school and high school, when they go to college they are going to make better choices. They aren’t going to take out more student loans than they need to, so it really starts from a young age and builds from there.”

To educate the teachers effectively, Boyd said they bring in many experts on financial matters.

“They have investment advisors coming in to talk about retirement planning,” Boyd said. “We have a gentleman here who has done a longitudinal study on the impact of financial literacy in high schools, so he is going to present some of his findings on the importance of what they are doing in the classroom and what the long term impact is on kid’s futures.”

Boyd said that debt is a bigger part of society now than ever before, which makes education around it imperative.

“Fifty percent of Americans carry credit card balances, the average American has at least 10,000 dollars in credit card debt, student loan debt is at an all time high with trillions owed,” Boyd said. “Making sure that people understand where their money is going to come from and where it is going to go back out in terms of debt management is really important.”





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