2013 Conference

Financial Services

Financial Services

To meet student needs for financial counseling it is important to understand why student come for counseling, when they seek counseling, and whether financial counseling reduces economic pressure so that students can stay in school and thrive academically. Using a variety of univariate and bivariate statistics we examined these issues with a sample of 272 students from the financial counseling clientele of a large public Midwestern university. We find that the type of financial issue matters because issues are tied to varying levels of financial stress and patterns in reducing stress. Reduced stress is a pattern that is associated with merely signing up for counseling as well as the counseling session itself. Financial stress was not related to temporal patterns in signing up for counseling, but was associated positively with having student loans, and negatively associated with having money invested. Policy implications of this research are identified.