Peer Financial Counseling to Provide Financial Education for Students

Abstract

Students usually come to college poorly prepared to manage their own finances. The Peer Financial Counseling program (PFC) was designed to address this problem by enlisting college students to teach other college students how to manage their finances responsibly. Enactus, the University of North Georgia's business club, has provided the student counselors to deliver the PFC program's content during workshops and class lectures since 2005. Over the years, team members presented modules on Student Loans, Debt and Credit, Identity Theft, and Budgeting. Each module contained a script for the student counselors, but each delivery was unique because individual team members shared their own experiences every time they did a presentation. At the end of each module presentation, evaluation sheets were completed by the student audience to determine if they enjoyed being taught by their peers, if they understood the content, and if they would modify their behavior as a result of having attended the workshop. Enactus's poster presentation to the UNG 20^th Annual Research Conference is based on the team's analysis of the data collected from the four module evaluation instruments since 2010. The Enactus students used the data to prepare graphs demonstrating the impact peer education had on improving the student audience's understanding of how to better manage their finances. Graphs were also prepared to determine if the audience would engage in responsible financial behavior in the future. The results suggest that the PFC program has a favorable impact on student financial literacy and behavior.

Key words: financial literacy, peer counseling, identity theft, budgeting, student loans