FINANCIAL EDUCATION FROM THE PERSPECTIVE OF UNIVERSITY STUDENTS: COMPARATIVE STUDY

Abstract

The importance of financial literacy has rapidly increased in the last decades. The critical need for sustainable financial decisions is driven by changes in the economy. The goal of this study was to find out how the university students rate their acquired financial knowledge and knowledge providers, with the purpose to find solutions for promoting personal financial education to promote financial literacy. The study used Explanatory sequential mixed methods design, in which a quantitative part of study was conducted among 1110 participants, followed by a qualitative part with a sample of 22 students. Students at universities of technology from two neighboring countries, Estonia, and Finland, participated in the survey. The data were collected in a quantitative part through a questionnaire survey and in a qualitative part during three focus groups. Based on the results of the quantitative survey, questions and participants were purposefully selected for the qualitative phase in order to explain the content of the quantitative results. The results showed that students’ interest to improve their financial literacy was high. The assessments revealed that most important financial knowledge provider was the family, and the university came next. The obstacle that was most mentioned in the pursuit of pre-university education, was a lack of interest in obtaining financial knowledge, which was largely due to boring teachers and learning material. The article presents students' assessments, opinions, and suggestions, and contributes to the literature on Mixed Methods Research (MMR) by describing the procedure how the solutions to the research problem was found.