Community college students and financial literacy

There are a number of factors that impact persistence for community college students including, but not limited to, the inability to manage their finances and student loan debt. However, due to limited resources, community colleges often are unable to help their students become more financially literate. If community college administrators better understood the needs of their students with respect to financial literacy and debt management, they could develop programs that would increase student persistence rates and better position their students to be financially successful before and after graduation. Therefore, this exploratory case study will explore the financial literacy needs of students at Essex County Community College (ECCC). To better understand and further investigate the impact of financial aid literacy on student success, the problem of practice will be analyzed through applicable theoretical frameworks of Vincent Tinto's Persistence Theory and Alexander Astin's Student Involvement Theory. For this research, financial literacy will be generally defined as the ability to make informed decisions about personal finances, which would include effectively managing student loan debt.