Student Lending Analytics Blog

Scared Straight Approach to Student Loans: A Documentary Playlist

This NGPF blog post was featured in NY Times article.  Good list to share with students as freshman (or hopefully even sooner) so they understand the downsides of overborrowing. 

Scared Straight Approach to Student Debt: A Documentary Playlist

This recent article about a community college in Florida caught my attention:

To get a student loan at Broward College, one of Florida’s largest community colleges, you first have to sit through a two-hour financial lesson with Kent Dunston.  It’s a little likeScared Straight, the 1978 documentary designed to keep kids from ending up in prison.  Dunston’s lesson, though, is about scaring students into making good financial choices. Nationwide, student loans total more than $1.2 trillion. And schools now face punishment — even closure — by the federal government if the rate is too high.

The article goes on to describe the experiment at Broward which included limiting student access to subsidized federal loans, thereby eliminating unsubsidized federal loans and private loans as options.  The school has not seen an impact on student enrollment and they HAVE seen declines in student defaults in the six years, since they implemented these programs.  After the call that I had a few weeks back with a student on the road to a $100K+ student loan balance, I started thinking we need to expose students to the downsides of student debt BEFORE they choose a college.

So, what would a video playlist look like to show students the downsides of student debt:

• Voices of Debt:  Don’t Major in Debt (11 minute video, documentary, January 2013)

NGPF May 2015 Newsletter:

Welcome to Next Gen Personal Finance's May 2015 Newsletter:   Honoring Teachers and Ideas for the Home Stretch! We crammed this newsletter with engaging ideas, activities and videos that we thought you and your students would enjoy as the school year draws to a close.   April was an exciting month at NGPF: We honored eight educators in our First Annual Financial Literacy Month Contest We updated our website to make it easier for you to find lessons and activities, to allow you to sign-up for webinars and surveys and we added a quiz feature too! Our work was featured in a recent New York Times column As we shift our focus to summer, we continue to think of ways to serve you better, including improved search capabilities of our resources, developing a question bank and creating new lessons in taxes and insurance.   Please don't forget that we continue to provide the following FREE content to educators: Lesson Library:  Over 70+ lessons with lesson plans, assessments and student activity guides Activity Bank:  Check out our engaging interactive exercises (over 80 available) NGPF Blog:  Updated daily, provides you with case studies, questions of the day and creative ways to incorporate current events into your classroom   Please send me an email ([email protected]) and let me know how we can help provide you with the resources you need to succeed in the classroom.    Regards, Tim  Sign Up for Our Free Webinar on May 27th:  "Infusing Current Events Into Your Personal Finance Classroom" Students see current events every day on Facebook, Instagram and Twitter. As a teacher, you want to be ready to capitalize on that interest to teach important developments in personal finance. In a recent survey of NGPF users, over 60% said they felt "learning what's new in personal finance" would be important to share with their students. But it's hard to quickly turn a current event into a well-designed, engaging lesson, right?  Wrong! Next Gen Personal Finance is here to help you learn HOW to take the great news story you read over your Sunday coffee, and tackle it with your students on Monday WITHOUT staying up all night toiling over a lesson.    Click here for additional details and to register for this FREE webinar that you won't want to miss.      Video Resources To Engage Your Students (and Teach Them Too!)  I thought you might appreciate this list of popular video resources that we have curated recently: PBS:  Can Money Buy Happiness? (9:28 run time) We The Economy:  Where Do Our Tax Dollars Go?  (5:58 run time) Banking Commercials:  What's the Message? (approx. two minutes) We The Economy:  How Does Wall Street Influence the Economy?  (9:23 run time) And for those looking to fill a class period, here is a PBS documentary onThe Psychology Behind Our Money Decisions (approx. one hour) Ready-To-Go Activities   We know that you are searching for short quick-hit activities to keep your students engaged (and that don't require a lot of prep work either).  Here are our best ideas: How about learning about networking and the importance of LinkedIn bycreating a famous person's LinkedIn profile? Your students choose! Who wouldn't want to plan their family's summer vacation? They will learn about budgeting too with this activity when they learn they have to keep it under $1,600! Was a high schooler really able to accumulate a $72 million portfolio? Your students will enjoy playing financial detectives with this case study.   It's all about the unit price!...your students will understand the importance of this concept after completing this engaging activity. Yes, unit price can be engaging. Try it and you will agree! Next Gen Personal Finance Featured in New York Times  We are hoping that NY Times columnist Ron Lieber's column on student loansspurred some family conversations about paying for college.  Check out the "financial plan" that I created when I was sixteen (which was highlighted in the story) and ask your students to create their own.  Also featured was a video playlist that NGPF curated with the ominous title "Scared Straight Approach to Student Debt."  Questions of The Day We love taking current events and turning them into engaging questions that you can use to kick off your lessons.   Here are Questions of the Day that have been trending on the NGPF Blog:   What Have Stock Market Returns Been Over the Past 90 Years? What Percentage of 18 and 19 Year Olds Don't Have A Credit Score?   How Much Is That College Major Worth? Why Do Incentives Matter When It Comes To Financial Products?  NGPF Honors Seven Educators In First Annual Educator Contest  Thank you to all teachers who contributed resources and activity ideas to the NGPF Financial Literacy Month Contest.  Here are the winners of $100 in the "Best Resource" category (click on the educator's name to learn more about them): Louise Biron from SUNY-Cobleskill (NY) Barbara O'Neill from Rutgers Cooperative Extension (NJ) Kelly Boyer from South Brunswick High School (NJ) Alex Lamon from Livingston High School (NJ) Tara Schoeny from Sycamore High School (OH) Winners of $500 in the "Best Activity" category: Kate Ivers from Rockford High School (MN) Barbara O'Neill from Rutgers Cooperative Extension (NJ) Jonathon Toczynski and Danielle Sawyer from JFK Memorial High School (NJ) We are already looking forward to the 2nd Annual!   Featured Teacher:  Brian Page (Reading High School, Ohio) I am excited to shine the spotlight this month on the work of Brian Page, a Finance, Economics and Business teacher at Reading High School in Ohio. Brian has won numerous awards, including 2011 Milken National Educator Award and served as a member of the Presidential Advisory Council on Financial Capability. He also brought a NY Times reporter along for a memorable field trip to visit a pawn shopwith his students.  Thank you to Brian for sharing his insights on strategies that work for him in the classroom.  What personal finance lesson(s) or habits did you learn from your parents?  I learned three important personal finance lessons from my parents. First of all, I learned about the important connection between money and values… prioritizing financial decisions based on what my family values most. Secondly, my father modeled and instilled the spirit of entrepreneurship in me. Most importantly my parents modeled and supported the expectation of a college education and the demands of being personally responsible.  What is your favorite activity to do with your students?   My two favorite activities with my students is my own co-creation, the Awesome Island Game… and Budget Challenge. Both are engaging hands on learning tools students respond well to. Budget Challenge is the bridge connecting what we're learning in the safety of our own classroom to the scary and complex financial world. Budget Challenge immerses students in an online interactive simulation where they compete with students from across the country for 9 weeks, road testing their own money management strategies.  If you could make one change to the way personal finance is taught in this country, what would it be?  If I could change one thing about the way personal finance is taught in this country, it would be the instructor and course requirements. NEFE found that only 1 in 5 teachers are confident in teaching all of the accompanying personal finance topics, yet legislative requirements and funding fall short of providing educators with the supportive professional development and certification requirements they deserve. Further, personal finance should be a semester long high school course devoted entirely to financial education instruction that is a graduation requirement. Ideally, the course would be a requirement for juniors and seniors and include broad ranging hands on learning activities, field trips, simulations, games… and focus on topics pertaining to the financial decisions teens make today, or will soon make.

Chart of the Month:  How Much Is That College Major Worth? Be sure to check out this NGPF Blog post for discussion points that accompany this chart.    Community Activity Next Gen Personal Finance actively supports the financial literacy community through workshops, conference sponsorships and volunteer teaching. We are based in the Bay Area but travel constantly so e-mail me at[email protected], if you are interested in discussing a speaking or sponsorship opportunity.  Upcoming Events May 18, 2015: Personal Finance Workshop at Castilleja School (Palo Alto, CA) June 22, 2015:  Summit Public Schools Summer Challenge Course (San Francisco area) June 28, 2015:  National Summit on Collegiate Financial Wellness (Bloomington, IN) June 28, 2015:  FBLA National Leadership Conference (Chicago, IL) Previous 2015 Events January 21-23, 2015:  Collaboration with Harvard University Winter Session Personal Finance Course (Cambridge, MA) February 24, 2015:  Common Ground Personal Finance Workshop for Educators and Panel Discussion With Parents (Princeton, NJ) February 28, 2015:  FBLA Bay Section Conference (Daly City, CA) - NGPF provided two workshops for FBLA Advisors and students March 24, 2015: Free Webinar "How To Find Personal Finance Resources" January-March, 2015: Pilot at Eastside Prep (East Palo Alto, CA) April 10, 2015: FBLA California State Conference (Santa Clara, CA) Follow Us on Social Media Twitter Facebook Google Plus Pinterest

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