Chaparral 2011-2012: Financial Survival Week 2012

Dear colleagues:

As you all know, students nowadays are facing a very difficult, and worsening, financial situation.  On the one hand, state support for higher education has been declining, which has led to huge raises in tuition fees almost everywhere.  So we see students graduating with increasing amounts of debt. On the other hand, they are facing an ever-tightening job market: the economy is down and will take quite a while to recover, and lots of good jobs have gone abroad never to come back.  That will make their access to economic security all the more difficult and will put them at the mercy of a financial sector that has become increasingly greedy and predatory.

     This is why many colleges across the nation are making an effort to educate their students about the financial realities they are face, and to give them some tools to deal with the situation. That is what some of us have decided to do here: we have organized a “Financial Survival Week” for the beginning of May.  It consists of presentations and workshops in the early afternoons; they are mostly directed at students, but everyone is welcome, and we have added some specifically for faculty and staff.  You will find the schedule below.

     We need your help to get the students to attend.  They need more financial savvy, as you all know.  So please send them to as many of these presentations and workshops as possible: encourage them, push them, give them extra credit if possible, but get them there: you might save their careers and their lives.  Thank you.  

Jean Lecuyer for the Financial Survival Week committee