A Game to Help Students Pay the Right Price for College
- 7 years ago
A Game to Help Students Pay the Right Price for College
In an ideal educational world, experiential games like this would be core elements
of a financial literacy master class that every high school student would take.
In playing, students see running totals of their debt but can also track academic focus, the connections they’re making
that could be useful later and their overall happiness — crucial factors in actually finishing college and graduating with a job that can help them repay their debt.
In the last big economic downturn, back when Tim Ranzetta was in the student loan analysis
and consulting business and working with colleges, borrowers often found their way to him, too.
A big part of the reason, Ms. Nicholson said, is that the firm recognized that paying for college is not just about debt but also about investment.
That last one comes from Ms. Nicholson’s personal experience, for she eventually realized
that focus and happiness were sometimes counterpoints and she might have received a better return on her investment in college if she’d had more fun and more friends.
After successful stints in the paper-shredding and executive compensation industries, Mr. Ranzetta turned to student loan consulting when his older siblings started sending their own children to college
and threw up their hands in confusion and despair when trying to borrow to pay for it.
And he would get off the phone with the same frustration each time over how little the people who actually use them know about student loans.
In an ideal educational world, experiential games like this would be core elements
of a financial literacy master class that every high school student would take.
In playing, students see running totals of their debt but can also track academic focus, the connections they’re making
that could be useful later and their overall happiness — crucial factors in actually finishing college and graduating with a job that can help them repay their debt.
In the last big economic downturn, back when Tim Ranzetta was in the student loan analysis
and consulting business and working with colleges, borrowers often found their way to him, too.
A big part of the reason, Ms. Nicholson said, is that the firm recognized that paying for college is not just about debt but also about investment.
That last one comes from Ms. Nicholson’s personal experience, for she eventually realized
that focus and happiness were sometimes counterpoints and she might have received a better return on her investment in college if she’d had more fun and more friends.
After successful stints in the paper-shredding and executive compensation industries, Mr. Ranzetta turned to student loan consulting when his older siblings started sending their own children to college
and threw up their hands in confusion and despair when trying to borrow to pay for it.
And he would get off the phone with the same frustration each time over how little the people who actually use them know about student loans.