Financial News Savvy and Its Importance: A Study of Business and Finance Majors

An increasing demand for students’ financial news savvy by employers combined with the likely increase in learning assessments in financial news savvy for accreditation purposes show a need to investigate the degree of financial news savvy students possess and the importance they attach to it. The primary objective of this article is to assess students’ level of financial news savvy. Our hypotheses collectively state that students will exhibit a greater level of financial news savvy and will perceive a greater importance of financial news savvy the more finance courses they have completed; the greater their belief that employers value financial news savvy; and the more professional activities they are exposed to. Conversely, students will exhibit less financial news savvy and will attach less importance to this savvy the more they are constrained by either time or peer pressure. Using responses from 477 students at a large suburban public university, we find strong evidence for all hypotheses. These results imply a value-added finance program that is not exclusively focused on theoretical knowledge. Constraining factors such as time and peer pressure could be addressed naturally by exposing the students to more and more professional settings.