Financial Wellness – What does it mean and why is it important?

Submitted by Camille Johnson

From June 14-17, I attended the National Summit on Collegiate Financial Wellness in Columbus, Ohio, and I was the only Canadian in attendance.  Although the planning committee was thrilled, they still asked the question – what was I doing at a conference on US Collegiate Financial Wellness?

To properly answer that question, I first need to address another question – what is financial wellness, and why is it important to the work that we do with our students?

For our students, financial wellness can be simply defined as this: having enough financial resources, and knowing how to manage those resources, so that they can successfully complete their studies.  But financial wellness goes beyond having enough money to complete their degree.  It’s also making sure they have the education to manage their finances for the short-term – so that they can maintain their overall health and well-being to succeed in their studies – and for the long-term, so that they have the life skills to succeed after graduation.

And here’s what we know about the financial situation of our students*:

• 62% of our undergraduate students are concerned with how they will pay for their educational expenses, with just over half of students experiencing financial hardship because of these expenses.
• 1 in 3 UBC students rely on student loans
• 2 in 5 undergrads don’t know what their debt will be at graduation

*Data pulled from the 2015 AMS Academic Experience Survey

To address these concerns, Enrolment Services has already increased funding to key award programs such as the Major Entrance Scholarships and the Centennial Scholars Entrance Award Program.  But as we already know, funding is only part of the solution.

Although a Canadian Financial Literacy Conference was held in 2014 in Vancouver, this conference was only the start of a national conversation around promoting financial literacy in all sectors and demographics in the country.  But in the US this conversation is already in full swing – the National Summit on Collegiate Financial Wellness brings together over 100 US post-secondary institutions from across the US – and now Canada – annually to learn from each other how they have been able to successfully reach their students with this key information.

The Summit was jam-packed with sessions from how to start your financial literacy program to how to market your program to students.  Some of the key takeaways for me were:

• Financial literacy is a global issue, and in many countries is reaching or is already at the point of crisis. And it’s not just developing countries – according to the research conducted by the Global Financial Literacy Excellence Centre in Washington, D.C., major world economies such as the US and Canada are struggling with this as well.
• Some of these financial wellness campus programs have been running as early as 2001, and serve campuses as large as our own. Ohio State University’s Financial Wellness program has a total of 67 Financial Peer Educators to serve their students!
• In order to reach our students with the information they need to know, we need a better understanding of what their financial situation is, and what their needs are. This will vary from institution to institution (and even campus to campus), but if we take the time to understand these needs, this will help us to dictate the best methods for delivering financial wellness programming.

So what are we doing now to improve the financial wellness of our students?

Our ESPs already connect with students on a daily basis, helping them to understanding the financial resources available to them and how to manage those resources.  But here are some of the other things that we are doing to address these needs:

• We deliver regularly scheduled financial literacy workshops to students, and we are expanding these offerings by offering webinars as well as workshops tailored to specific student groups such as our graduate and post-baccalaureate populations.
• We are going to the data – from survey results to award, loan and bursary trends, and even to our website traffic, we are finding out from students what their needs are so we can better address those needs.
• We are in the process of developing a financial peer program so that selected students not only get in-depth training on how to best manage their finances, but also get to share some of that information in peer-to-peer interactions.

With the rising costs of tuition and living, it is more important than ever that students are learning how to manage their finances.  Thanks to the conference sessions I attended at the Summit we have a new set of resources and best practices to better support our students, and we can proudly say that we are part of the international conversation on how to improve the financial wellbeing of students.

Have you attended a conference or workshop recently? Consider writing a blog post about what you learned! Contact your ES Connected rep for more information.