Financing Life: WFI’s Online Course Draws Broad Interest

Since launching the college’s first noncredit online course in 2014, Smith’s Center for Women and Financial Independence (WFI) has succeeded in bringing the expertise of college faculty to a wider audience.

More than 500 people—a combination of students, faculty, staff, alumnae and their friends and family—have enrolled in the center’s free “Financing Life” course. Beloved economics professor Randy Bartlett, has designed the course as a series of online lessons about personal finance.

Many people lack a basic understanding of money management, said Bartlett, who has taught the center’s popular “Financing Life” course on campus for more than two decades.

“I’ve tried to translate what I do in the classroom to online,” Bartlett said. “This course offers valuable, accessible information about finances from a source that people can trust.”

“Financing Life,” an introductory course that requires no previous knowledge of economics or finance, is open to anyone with computer access who fills out the online registration form.Topics covered in the video lessons—which participants can follow on their own schedule—include debt and credit, dealing with taxes and saving for retirement.

The course also provides a glossary of terms to help demystify finance, as well as learning activities aimed at reinforcing understanding of key concepts such as compound interest, inflation and marginal tax rates.

The course was made possible with the support of a gift from an alumna in California who was looking for a way to extend the WFI’s offerings beyond the Smith campus.

“In deciding on the purpose of the gift, I thought about what course subject is generally missing for people that current Smith faculty teach superbly,” said the alumna donor, who wanted to remain anonymous. “The answer was finance.”

Economics professor Mahnaz Mahdavi, who serves as faculty director of the WFI, said “this was a visionary gift, recognizing the importance of financial literacy to everyone.”

René Heavlow, director of the WFI, said the course aligns with the center’s mission to provide women in particular with the skills they need to address financial issues throughout their lifetimes.

“Financial education is not about teaching you to become rich, but about helping you achieve your financial goals,” Heavlow said. “We wanted to design a course that would reach not just undergraduates, but people at all stages of their lives.”

Bartlett noted that lack of awareness about personal finances “can be problematic when it comes to mishandling debt or not seeing the significance of compound interest for retirement savings.”

He teamed up with Mahdavi and fellow Smith economics professor Roger Kaufman to plan the course and create the lessons, Q&As and case studies. Senior media producer Kate Lee and other staff members in Information Technology Services helped produce the online lectures.

Mahdavi said the design of the course reflects research showing people are more likely to increase their savings if they think about personal finances as a lifelong priority. Fictional characters used to illustrate the video concepts are Smith alumnae at different points on the age spectrum—from recent graduates to middle-aged workers to seniors planning for retirement.

Mahdavi said “reviews” over the past two years have shown the course is answering a need for more education about money management.

“Learning about personal finances is a process of adding to your human capital—a way of investing in your future,” she said. “That’s been the idea of the WFI since we started in 2001 and this course provides the perfect opportunity for sharing this wisdom of Smith with the larger community.”

Prof. Randy Bartlett teaches a free, online course in personal finance that was supported by an alumna's gift to the Smith College Center for Women and Financial Independence.