Spotlight on the Value of Guarantor Services: Financial Literacy for College Students

When students at Ivy Tech Community College in Richmond, Ind., choose from among 10 freshman seminar offerings, one of the first classes filled is the personal finance course based on USA Funds^® Life Skills^®. 

“This is the third semester we’ve offered the class — there’s a huge demand for it,” says Delores Hazzard, director of student success and retention at the Richmond campus of the statewide institution.

The campus has been using USA Funds Life Skills for several years but just recently incorporated it into the school’s overall retention program. “We collected data that showed that one of the main reasons students do not persist with their studies is because they have financial concerns,” Hazzard says. “So we were proactive in setting up a program to address their needs early in their education.”

Basic personal finance skills — for example, budgeting, the wise use of credit, managing time and money, setting educational and career goals, establishing and following an academic plan, and finding employment — help college students minimize the debt they incur to pay college expenses and equip them to repay the student loans that helped finance their education.

USA Funds Life Skills is a Web-based financial literacy program that equips schools to teach their students to manage their time and money wisely while they are on campus and after graduation. Topics, which are presented as life lessons, can be grouped and tailored for specific student segments, such as adult learners, graduate and professional students or at-risk populations.

As the U.S. Congress considers student loan reform legislation, the nation’s guarantors, including USA Funds, are proposing to expand the services they deliver to assist borrowers in the William D. Ford Direct Loan Program. Financial literacy tools are among those services.

USA Funds has provided USA Funds Life Skills free of charge since 2002 to postsecondary institutions to serve their students. Originally a paper-based curriculum with nine modules for undergraduates, graduate and professional students and adult learners, the program now is offered online.

Nationwide more than 500 postsecondary institutions have implemented the program. Last year, more than 310 schools nationwide received 163,000 copies of USA Funds Life Skills materials.

Flexible, interactive
Hazzard says she likes the flexibility of USA Funds Life Skills because she can customize her program specifically for her students at Ivy Tech. “We can adjust the syllabus based on the students we have in the class on the first day,” she says, noting that about 70 percent of students at Ivy Tech are nontraditional. “Having USA Funds Life Skills available makes it so much easier to teach this class. It really sets the framework for the class.”

Students earn one credit for the five-week class, and they learn important skills such as goal setting, budgeting, managing credit card debt, guarding against identity theft and the importance of their credit scores. Many students are shocked when they look at their credit report, she says.

“We help them work through how to repair or establish credit. We help them to see where they made mistakes and what they can do differently in the future,” she says. “I tell students this is not a textbook class — we give them real life skills they can apply to their own situations.”

The interactive component of USA Funds Life Skills helps meet students’ need for flexibility to access the information when they can, Hazzard says. “Students have jobs and families, and they really appreciate the ability to work at home or use the computer lab to work on modules and prepare for the next class,” she says.

Hazzard says she appreciates the resources USA Funds provides to help student success and persistence. “The skills students develop add structure to their lives and, in turn, help students to be successful in the classroom and in life — and persist with their studies.”