Stanford Graduate School of BusinessIFDM TPF Session 1: How Colleges and Universities Can Strengthen Personal Finance Education in High
Stanford Graduate School of Business
Tim Ranzetta sets the stage 0:06
Tim Ranzetta, co-founder of NextGen Personal Finance, opens by describing the state of personal finance education. Thirty states now require at least a one semester standalone course, and within two years thirteen of those states will reach full implementation, meaning one million more students will take the course. He stresses that legislation is only the first step and that teachers are the key to successful implementation, noting NGPF has trained 25,000 teachers who have logged nearly 700,000 hours improving their craft. He outlines five topics for the panel: serving high school students, supporting teachers, curriculum, investing education for Gen Z, and research opportunities.
Beth Kobliner on Get a Financial Life 5:30
Beth Kobliner, author of Get a Financial Life, introduces the free, open source curriculum GLNYC, built with the Heckscher Foundation for Children and now taught in 70 New York City high schools. Created with teacher and student input, it meets New York's new 33 topic requirement and rests on three principles: unbiased content, relevant actionable advice, and building family conversation through a take home booklet. She shares that students paid through the summer youth program often lacked bank accounts, relying instead on Cash App or Venmo, and describes strong student interest in online gambling, crypto, and social media financial claims, noting that 50 to 75 percent of young people get financial advice from social media.
Eli Lesser introduces Wharton's youth work 14:30
Eli Lesser, executive director of the Wharton Global Youth Program, begins describing Wharton's outreach, including MBA students teaching a four credit personal finance course to about a thousand high schoolers, an investment competition, and a tax prep program where students learn by helping others file taxes. He notes Wharton has long run summer residential programs for high schoolers, which also give PhD students teaching experience, and begins explaining the broader opportunity this model offers other universities.
Summer Programs at Wharton 16:30
You can hear how Wharton runs fee-based summer programs for high school students, with scholarships available for those who couldn't otherwise afford to attend. Students live in the dorms and study with faculty and PhD students in courses like essentials of finance, entrepreneurship, data science, product design, and a sports analytics program called Moneyball.
Global Investment Competition Details 17:00
The Wharton Global High School Investment Competition, free to schools, began 11 years ago as a modern version of old newspaper stock market games. Each year a young alum's story anchors a case study, teams of four to six students build an investment plan from September to December, and submissions are narrowed from thousands of teams to a top 50, then a top 10 who travel to Philadelphia for a live pitch. This year 7,347 teams registered, representing 47 states and over 60 countries, alongside a separate winter data science competition.
Dual Enrollment Called Preboccalaureate 20:02
Wharton offers dual enrollment, branded as preboccalaureate, letting high schoolers earn University of Pennsylvania credit through half-credit courses in subjects like negotiation, marketing, and macroeconomic finance. To reach students who can't pay or access these courses, Wharton partnered with the National Education Opportunity Network to target Title I schools, recognizing that low-income students often juggle jobs or caregiving and may need extra academic support.
Embedded Preboccalaureate Finance Course 22:31
Finance professor David Musto built an asynchronous personal finance curriculum, now running in 26 high schools across six states, covering budgeting, taxes, discounted cash flow, investing, student loans, and even negotiating loan terms. An MBA teaching fellow joins each classroom weekly by video to lead problem sets, and students earn a real Penn transcript at no cost.
Tax Course Returns Money Locally 24:31
A paired course on income tax and fiscal policy trains students as young as 16 in the IRS's VITA volunteer tax preparation program, sending them into their communities to file returns for neighbors and family. When Wharton undergraduates ran this service-learning course, they returned 1.5 million dollars to the Philadelphia community in a single year, with similar VITA efforts noted at Cal State LA, which returned 3 million dollars, and West Virginia University.
Designing Curriculum for Non-Finance Teachers 27:32
Beth describes building a curriculum for New York City teachers who often lack finance backgrounds, given that 75 percent of students there come from families at or below the poverty level and need practical survival knowledge. With New York State now requiring 33 personal finance topics, the lessons are designed as plug-and-play with detailed teacher notes, using relatable examples like explaining that a credit card is a loan and that missing payments at a 22 percent APR on a 1,000 dollar balance could mean not paying it off until age 32.
Teachers Learning Their Own Benefits 30:01
Many teachers told Beth's team they felt overwhelmed by their own complicated benefits programs and weren't participating in them. In response, the curriculum team created a one-page guide and a website section explaining New York City teacher benefits, revealing details like a guaranteed 7 percent lifetime return option in one 403b choice and the new ability to switch from a regular 403b to a Roth 403b.
Helping Teachers With Their Own Money 31:00
Teachers explain personal finance more effectively when they feel confident about their own money, something research backs up. It took one organization eleven years to act on this, but they eventually built a ten-hour asynchronous teacher wealth course covering the major financial categories teachers care about, and it has drawn strong interest and engagement, with the added benefit that teachers become better instructors once their own finances feel more secure.
Training MBAs To Lead Discussions 32:01
At Wharton, MBAs were recruited to lead recitation-style discussions built on a faculty member's asynchronous content rather than full classroom teaching, and over 60 MBAs applied for just 15 slots in the first year. Their role is limited to leading conversation, with light grading support from an undergraduate TA and no classroom management duties, since a classroom teacher handles that. Training is brief because the MBAs are already immersed in strong teaching daily and can model it. Staff now audit sessions virtually and give direct feedback, which MBAs take well.
University Teacher Prep Partnerships 34:00
Several universities were highlighted for teacher preparation work, including a weeklong summer workshop drawing 100 teachers nationally, West Virginia University's finance university running since 2002 as one of only two credentialing paths there, and Arizona State University's three-course sequence combining its business school and teachers college. The hope is that more states will build this kind of teacher prep so less on-the-job training is needed, with business schools and education schools collaborating more often.
What High School Students Want 36:01
Students asked most about crypto, online gambling, and prediction markets, often admitting they gamble underage using VPNs or a sibling's account. The curriculum counters this with data: a UCSD study found gamblers lose 96 percent of the time long term, and a Wall Street Journal study found 67 percent of prediction market profits go to one-tenth of one percent of users. By contrast, the stock market has been positive in 99 percent of rolling 15-year periods over 45 years, though with no guarantee of continuing. Students also showed strong interest in taxes, fearing legal trouble, leading to a mock 1040 form required by New York State, and in credit cards, often believing they must build credit early, sometimes through joint accounts with parents that can backfire on either party's credit score. Gen Z carries about $3,500 in average credit card debt, with 60 percent paying only the minimum, so the lessons stress waiting until you can pay in full.
Exposing Prediction Market Tactics 40:02
A Wall Street Journal investigation revealed influencers paid by Polymarket to falsely claim winnings, and platforms have been known to remove users who win too consistently. Understanding these business models helps young people think critically, since nobody likes feeling ripped off.
Team Skills Beyond Stock Picking 41:00
An investing competition is designed so not every team member needs deep financial knowledge, since roles include pitching clients, public speaking, and creative strategy, with skills developing over the process. A related concern is that students in underserved communities often lack a quantitative mindset, so programs are raising math prerequisites, pushing to involve math teachers, and emphasizing that financial literacy requires comfort with basic formulas and percentages, which one speaker called the concept that trips up students most despite being central to finance.
Teaching Behavioral Finance And Assessment Results 44:00
Asked about behavioral economics, the curriculum covers consumer-facing tactics like constant "two for one" sales and uses interactive credit card calculators showing how interest rates, now around 22 percent compared to 10 to 12 percent a decade ago, and slightly higher payments change outcomes. A before-and-after assessment of the ten-lesson course showed scores rising from 46 percent correct to 68 percent correct, not a randomized controlled study but a promising sign, with further work planned to identify remaining gaps.
Behavioral economics and faculty incentives 46:31
One panelist described adding a behavioral economics unit as the first part of a semester course, since personal finance starts with understanding personal attitudes toward money, and recommended Morgan Housel's book The Psychology of Money as a tool used with thousands of teachers. On the question of motivating research-focused faculty to support these programs, the advice was to repurpose existing course content for a high school audience, lean on instructional designers, and seek out campus offices that already handle pre-college outreach, background checks, and administrative rules.
Fraud, scams, and online risk 49:30
A question about rising financial fraud, phishing, and AI-driven scams prompted panelists to stress simple, concrete lessons like never sharing passwords, spotting fake emails, and knowing credit card versus debit card protections, with an upcoming game planned specifically on fraud.
Debate over stock-picking contests 52:01
Panelists disagreed on stock-picking competitions, with one defending them as teaching long-term financial planning rather than short-term trading, and another favoring low-cost index funds and citing a classroom game called Stacks where students day-trading against a computer buying index funds lose ninety percent of the time.
Reaching middle schoolers and parents 55:01
A parent of middle-school twins raised teaching younger kids, noting a math teacher had dropped personal finance examples from the curriculum. Panelists agreed earlier is better, noting a middle school course was built separately from the high school one, and that money habits, like saving five dollars weekly at age seven, form early.
Drawing the line on financial advice 57:32
Panelists addressed where education ends and advice begins, agreeing programs avoid things like having students open specific bank accounts, but favor giving transparent comparisons, such as a bank paying 0.01 percent versus one paying 6 percent, so students can judge for themselves, with universities positioned as trusted, non-commercial sources.
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