Instead of requiring students to take gender studies courses, how about a course requirement in personal finance?

Josiah Baker of the John William Pope Center makes a compelling case.

The Case for Personal Finance in College

Courses in financial literacy ought to be more widespread because students’ ignorance is vast.

As a finance and economics professor, I often encounter students with scarce financial knowledge. While students finish high school well-versed in topics such as dangerous drugs and sex, often they know little about basic financial concepts such as compounding interest or the mechanics of the stock market.

One reason is that money management skills are absent from standardized testing; another is that students have little idea of how much they are borrowing for college. Because most loans allow deferment until students leave school, many of them borrow beyond what they need without realizing the long-term repercussions, as Jenna Ashley Robinson pointed out in this article.

Students face an ever-changing environment of financial choices, with more frequent critical life decisions than previous generations. Jobs are increasingly influenced by a rapidly changing global economy. Higher education costs continue to rise and many students will be paying off their loans for years. Yet, while students enter college with many educational choices, a personal finance course is rarely an option—and if it is an option, students usually don’t know about it.

During my career, I have taught personal finance in different formats: online at a liberal arts university and at a community college, and also in traditional classrooms at an urban community college and at a state university. The course is usually at the freshman or sophomore level. Its textbooks cover the daily basics of investing, budgeting, retirement planning, consumer issues, credit cards, mortgages, car loans, and insurance policies. Though there is some math required, its difficulty is not an academic barrier for any college student.