Finance courses gain popularity
At a time when Americans are grasping to understand the causes and effects of an economic downturn, Missouri students are putting more emphasis on their financial education. For some students, the reasons may be tied to both personal and professional ambitions.
“Student interest in finance appears to be strong right now,” said Bragg Stanley, director of guidance and placement at the Missouri Department of Elementary and Secondary Education (DESE). “No doubt the new state graduation requirement for a personal finance course is a main reason for the boost. It also could be that the recent developments in the economy have helped students realize the importance of being financially literate in order to make sound decisions regarding their own economic and financial security.”
Missouri is one of only three states in the nation requiring at least a semester of personal finance for high school graduates, according to the National Jump$tart Coalition. In Missouri, the requirement will start this fall’s senior class, the class of 2010. Enrollment in personal finance courses offered in Missouri saw an increase of more than 10,000 students (32,309 to 42,568) from 2008 to the school year that ended this spring.
Meanwhile, a strong proportion of Missouri students are reporting interests well-suited to careers in finance. In fact, in terms of student interest, finance is right now the number one career field.
This finding comes from DESE-sponsored career-interest assessment, the Kuder Career Search with Person Match, taken online by nearly 50,000 Missouri high school students during the ’08-‘09 school year. According to those assessments, 12.7 percent of students (or 1 in 8) have interests that fit well with a finance-related career. The next most popular field was health science with 11.8 percent of students, and architecture/construction came in third with 9.5 percent.
Given all the negative news now surrounding certain financial professionals, students and parents might wonder whether pursuing a career in finance would be a good decision, regardless of how much aptitude a student shows for the field. In fact, there are still great opportunities in finance, said Betty Brown, a research analyst with the Missouri Economic Research and Information Center.
“Finance is a broad field,” Brown said. “It includes occupations in accounting, banking, insurance, economics, and securities and investments. Many of these jobs offer better-than-average wages and several openings.”
In Missouri, four of the occupations listed in the Missouri Economic and Research Information Center’s newly-released Top 50 report belong to the financial field: 1) insurance sales agents; 2) securities, commodities and financial services sales agents; 3) claims adjusters, examiners and investigators; and 4) loan officers. All Top 50 jobs scored well in terms of employment outlook, growth and average wages.
Finance-related careers did even better in a March 2009 report on CareerBuilder.com. The report identified 10 promising jobs for the class of 2009, using data from the National Association of Colleges and Employers’ “Job Outlook 2009” survey and the Bureau of Labor Statistics’ “Occupational Outlook Handbook.” Of the 10 featured occupations, three were in the financial field: 1) accountants and auditors, 2) financial analysts and 3) personal financial advisors.
A good resource for exploring these careers and others is MissouriConnections.org. This site has several tools for education and career planning, including nearly 300 Missouri Occupation Profile Sheets grouped according to 16 career clusters, one of which is finance. Each occupation profile provides an occupation description, employment trends, wage information, education requirements and programs.