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Many in the U.S. struggle to manage their finances. To address this, many states now incorporate financial education requirements into their public school curriculum. This study examines whether such policy changes result in increased financial knowledge in college students that took a high school financial education class. A survey of 482 undergraduate students from a 4-year public university was conducted. Students enrolled in a general education personal finance course were recruited to participate; 69% had taken a high school finance course. Students completed survey measures of subjective and objective knowledge pre- and post-course. Before the course began, 10.7% more students that had high school financial education indicated their financial knowledge was ‘slightly high to very high’ compared to peers without prior education (significant at the 10% level using non-parametric Wilcoxon rank-sum 2-sample tests). Results suggest college students with prior financial education are perhaps more confident in their financial knowledge compared to peers. However, preliminary results suggest such college students do not have significantly higher levels of financial knowledge compared to peers. While state-mandated high school financial education may improve the financial confidence of students, more work is needed to uncover whether actual financial knowledge is improved.
