West Virginia University School of Medicine serves approximately 425 medical students. Despite the large education debts that medical students incur, school officials note that it is challenging to find time in medical students’ busy schedules and to focus their interest on debt-management-education programs. School officials note that a good working relationship with the school’s administrators has helped provide the instructional time to present key debt-management topics.

Programs
West Virginia University School of Medicine undertakes the following activities to promote sound debt-management practices among its students:

• First-, second- and third-year students receive an annual letter indicating their current educational debt and an estimate of their payments based on that debt level.
• As part of their orientation, all first-year students are required to participate in an hour-long presentation that covers indebtedness of previous-year graduates, budgeting, credit-card management, credit scores, cutting everyday expenses, and expected cost of attendance for the remaining curriculum. Beginning with the 2007-2008 academic year, another session will be required for second-year students. The focus will be on common money terms, budgeting and how money grows, among other topics.
• During the final year of the curriculum, graduating students participate in a three-hour session that focuses on exit counseling, loan consolidation, and more details of money management. The session also discusses insurance coverage, what to look for in a good financial adviser, investing, stocks, bonds and mutual funds, taxes, and other general money-management terms. During the fourth-year financial-management seminar, students have the opportunity to meet one-on-one with a financial adviser to discuss specific topics of interest to the students.
• Voiceover presentations to be housed on the student Web portal will discuss a variety of money-management topics as well as the types of aid available.

Results
Although medical students have exceptionally low rates of student-loan defaults, financial education and debt-management information are important to their future success, given the complex financial decisions they will face in establishing and maintaining their medical practices. The overall results of the initiative have been largely favorable. A student survey disclosed that some students desired more-specific information. A future goal of the program is to provide foundational aspects of money management during the first two sessions (for first- and second-year students) and build on those concepts in the final year.