The Panther

Issue date: 9/21/05 Section: Over Looking The Hill

How is it that we - faculty and administrators at PVAMU - are allowing our students to graduate without knowing what they need to build wealth when they leave here?  I don't know many students who go to college so they can become poor, especially minority students.  They come here to learn how to build wealth, and we are allowing them to leave without knowing how.  Instead, we allow the dealers of plastic crack (credit cards) and cell-phone addiction to pounce upon our students when they first come to school, then we allow our students to fall knee-deep into debt traps while here, and finally we don't even teach them how to invest before they leave.

As Chris Rock said in his movie Head of State, "That ain't right!"

To faculty and staff, I ask: how on earth is it that we are allowing our young to go out into the battle of life unarmed and unprepared to deal with all the financial perils out there?  Do we want them to be slaughtered, or don't we care enough to do better?  How can we do this to our young?

To students, I ask:  how on earth is it that you aren't insisting that this sorry state of affairs change?  Why aren't you making more noise about this?  Do you want to be poor?  Do you want to be financially debt-ridden and dependent throughout your lives?  I hardly think so.

My simple but powerful vision is that all students at Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCUs) will have the opportunity to learn how to master their personal finances before they graduate.  Toward that end, we in the College of Business have initiated a personal financial planning course open to all majors, as well as a minor in personal financial planning for those students thinking about a career in the burgeoning financial services industry.  We are also in the process of testing a stock market game used by 42 of the top 50 U.S. business schools so we can make it available, free of charge, to as many PV students as are interested.

We all need to train ourselves to become knowledgeable in personal finance, so we can change our lives and help our families, friends and communities to change their lives.  We need good financial advice, good financial strategies, and good financial products. Just imagine how much better off the victims of Hurricane Katrina would be if they had basic financial products like renter's or term life insurance!

We at PVAMU can take the lead in this area on behalf of our students and community.  The window of opportunity is wide open, if we are willing to take advantage of it.

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