The Education Cents Program
Education Cents offers a login-enabled, interactive website with a self-paced curriculum accompanied by optional in-person presentations as well as a printed guide. The three approaches are intended to work effectively together or as stand-alone learning tools.
The Education Cents online program includes information and tools addressing broad personal finance topics including managing a budget, credit and debt, income and spending, saving and investments, and college financing. The program is presented in units so that users can choose which topics are most important or interesting to them. Or, based on answers to a few brief questions, we can recommend which units to get started. For our registered users, we save their work and even keep the information entered into Education Cents tools so that users can pick up right where they leave off.
Our Core Values
Higher Education Focus – Finances are one of the most common barriers to enrolling and remaining in higher education. With improved financial literacy, students and families will better understand the positive impact that higher education can have on their financial future. They’ll also have a better understanding of the tools and resources available to create a financial plan to get to college and stay in college.
Head and Heart Approach – Because financial decisions are so often motivated by emotional, psychological, and cultural forces, our program will focus on more than the fundamentals of personal finance. In addition to teaching users about the nuts and bolts, including defining financial terms and explaining how finances work and fit together, the curriculum will also help users explore their relationships with money, the consequences of decisions they’ve made in the past or may make in the future, and the frameworks from which they view their financial situations. With this knowledge, users will have the tools to make good financial decisions and to recognize when they make less harmful financial decisions and understand why.
Partnership – We understand that many other not-for-profit organizations have special expertise in financial literacy. Our curriculum and tools are complementary to their exceptional contributions and will be offered collaboratively. Partnering with other expert organizations by sharing materials, access, and users to the greater benefit of Colorado families is a principal value for this program. We believe that the need for financial literacy is infinite and, through collaborating with our partners, we will come closer to ensuring financial access to education beyond high school for all Coloradans.
Referencing our content
Education Cents is a free program from the Colorado Department of Higher Education’s CollegeInvest. If you would like to reference or incorporate information from the Education Cents program, please attribute our content as follows:
CollegeInvest. ©(2009). <Name of Course>. In Education Cents. Retrieved from <full URL>