Schaff: Financial wellness should be part of ‘Healthy U’ initiative

Dean Kathy Humphrey cares about Pitt students, and by my calculation, there’s one more important way she can — and should — show it. Dean Kathy Humphrey cares about Pitt students, and by my calculation, there’s one more important way she can — and should — show it. Along with priming students to improve their personal and social habits, Humphrey should engage them in a money talk.

This past Wednesday, Humphrey’s Division of Student Affairs hosted an event called the “Healthy U Fair,” which gathered undergrads on the William Pitt Union lawn to promote awareness of Pitt’s health-related resources and emphasize “seven dimensions of wellness,” according to the division’s website. Hearing of the program, I, after spending years kvetchingly writing off Humphrey’s Outside the Classroom Curriculum like so many of my classmates, prepared for disappointment. But upon reading up on these wellness “dimensions,” my presumptions evaporated, leaving a residue of mostly pleasant surprise. Even if the lure of OCC credit contaminated students’ reasons for attending the fair, the Healthy U initiative reflects a real and honest attempt by the University to do good for its students. The dimensions, some of which include physical, emotional and environmental wellness, are the right ones chosen for the right reasons.

But without kind critics, even well-intentioned programs will fall short. That’s why, if the spirit of civic duty indeed floats in the skies over Oakland, I’m contributing: Healthy U could improve by inserting “personal financial wellness” into its master list. With more students struggling with finances in the jobless non-recovery, Dean Humphrey should recognize the opportunity for compassion and make some constructive noise.

There’s actually something scarier than journalists using cliches — journalists using the “cliche criterion” to protect their front pages from thoroughly reported stories that happen to have critical importance for readers. For example, where did Iraq War coverage go? Similarly, loan debt, exploding college tuition rates and post-graduation employment prospects are all topics that seem to fail the “cliche criterion” these days, especially among collegiate op-ed writers. We’ve had years to exhaust these opining opportunities, and predictably the act of moaning about our fellow students’ weakening financials is approaching editorial taboo.

But I don’t care.

Why? Because you don’t. Financial pressure on today’s college students is rapidly growing, as if by the hour.

First, it’s the cost. In a zero-inflation, recessionary environment, public universities are upping the price of higher education at a terrific pace. For example, since last year, Temple University raised tuition 10 percent, Pitt raised it 8.5 percent, and the University of California system used an 8 percent increase to top off the increases of 9 and 32 percent that it implemented each of the two years prior, respectively.

The second pressure, of course, is the loans to pay for the costs. According to FinAid.org, every second, the American population of student borrowers owes an additional $2,853.88 in loans — a rate that could push student loan debt beyond the $1 trillion mark next year. At the moment, student debt breaks down to $27,000 per graduating senior, financial aid expert Mark Kantrowitz told NPR.

And then, finally, it’s the absence of jobs that — you might guess — leads to failures to pay off the loans. The conventional wisdom among labor economists is that the U.S. job market must add at least 150,000 positions per month to supply the influx of newcomers to the workforce — like, say, recent college graduates. But thanks to ongoing economic malaise, the economy only added on average 40,000 workers per month since May, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. Last month, nearly three years after Lehman Brothers collapsed, the economy produced zero jobs. So much for that. The situation is so dire that default on student loans — which by law follow you till death do you part — is becoming more common. The New York Times reports that the unthinkable happened to 8.8 percent of borrowers last fiscal year. That figure’s up from 7 percent the previous year.

The issues underlying students’ financial pressures cannot be resolved by Dean Humphrey. Student Affairs might be powerful, but halting the explosion of college costs and student debt requires broad-swath cultural change, and the going-nowhere unemployment level demands intervention from the highest office — perhaps President Barack Obama’s jobs bill, if not something more major.

Instead, Dean Humphrey can use her political and organizational prowess to jumpstart discussion of personal finance on campus. Students arrive at Pitt with virtually no experience balancing checkbooks, paying bills or living on a budget (high schools usually don’t require a personal finance class), and thus a money-management program marketed in the Humphrey-style would only see high demand, especially from a student population now burdened by unprecedented financial pressure. Pitt’s website does say that the Academic Resource Center can offer personal finance advice, but to my knowledge there is no student body awareness of this fact. The justification for such a program would mirror the philosophy that seems to drive Healthy U: A University’s commitment to its students should not end at infusing them with academic knowledge, but at providing resources that facilitate healthy and happy lives. Combining personal finance awareness with the Healthy U initiative — or any other campaign — is not only consistent with Dean Humphrey’s ideals, but since students are under so much economic stress, it’s the right thing to do.

After all, what’s more pertinent of a “student affair” than a student’s wallet?

Email Matt at mbs52@pitt.edu.