In 2009, universities across the country offer a plethora of disciplines giving you (the student) an opportunity to study whatever you would like from the sciences to the social sciences to programming to the more practical/professional programs like Nursing, Engineering and Commerce. There is so much variety and choice these days and we often do not know what are major is going to be until the end of our first or second years. As an Arts student I have had the flexibility to take various courses that either directly pertain to my major, or courses that I am just generally interested in. However, I think two courses must be made mandatory for all first-year university students irrespective of what you are studying.
The first we’ll call Personal Finance 101. This course would not be a "business" one by any means, but a course that allows students to explore personal financial decision-making. The benefits of such are extensive and wide-ranging but mainly comprise learning good money management skills, how investment works, how we issue stocks and bonds, credit cards, insurance etc. Students are financially illiterate. Considering that ~ 55% of undergraduates students in Ontario are on OSAP, it is critical that everyone learn about how loans work, how to be smart with bursaries and grants, and how to put money into a savings account for starters. Learning how to budget personal finances can teach students a lot of useful information about checking and savings accounts for instance. It also teaches us how to set goals, devise a financial plan, and how to execute our plan. This gets us thinking about how we earn our money, and how we can start spending it more wisely or saving it for that matter.
We need to better understand personal balance sheets which lists the values of personal assets (e.g., car, house, clothes, stocks, bank account), along with personal liabilities (e.g., credit card debt, bank loan, mortgage). Such knowledge goes a long way. Even with the recent government tax form (T2202) or the T4, students were so confused and ambivalent about how to complete them and send them in. Such a course can review personal income statements and how taxes operate in this country.
The second course should be titled “environmental appreciation”. Such a course can expose students to the university’s natural environment, nature areas, gardens, rivers, streams or bodies of water. The point of the course is to inform students about their natural environment in a way that makes them critically review their connection with the environment and how they treat it. Such a course would not be overly scientific, but instead introduce students to the names of the local trees around their university, the birds that hover over campus, how the university gets its water and electricity, how the university composts its waste etc. This generates awareness and fosters a space that can teach students to embrace the natural environment with harmony and grace.
Key message: Knowledge on personal finances and the natural environment are seriously lacking. Confusion over how to pay your credit card and consequently being charged 18% interest is a problem that many students encounter. Neglecting the environment which connects everything in our life is also a problem. Incorporating these topics into first-year education certainly has some merit. If not a course then at least consider running on-going workshops and nature walks throughout the year to generate that awareness.
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