The University of Chicago is known for its economics faculty, which promotes the notion of a free-market economy and has been criticized as encouraging decisions that led to the current recession. Not far from the campus, the effects of the depressed economy are visible on Chicago’s South Side, with empty lots, foreclosed buildings, and high-interest lenders nearby.
Wanting to help in a hands-on way, a group of Chicago undergraduates interested in finance and investment started an organization that teaches the fundamentals of financial literacy and entrepreneurship to inner-city high-school students. Now, three years after it was founded, Moneythink has chapters at six other colleges. Morgan Hartley, one of the founders, is a fourth-year student, studying political science with a focus on the history of banking.
Q. What is Moneythink, and what is it trying to do?
A. Moneythink is a peer-mentorship organization that aims to teach basic life skills and financial skills through an entrepreneurship-based program. Undergraduate mentors will go into the classrooms of high-school juniors and seniors, and the teacher will give one or two class periods a week for us to work with their students. These students go through three to four weeks of basic entrepreneurship training. Then the class has 10 weeks after that to build a working venture. These classes usually have $300 to $400 of capital that they work with to get started, and you have to be able to start generating a profit right away. We’ve had things like lemonade stands and clothing businesses. My class recently started an event company and organized a school dance. They made about $300 in profits that went on to fund their next year’s school prom.
Q. How did Moneythink get started?
A. Moneythink began as a spinoff of an on-campus investment club called Blue Chips. We founders wanted to create a service arm for it. But a few things got in the way: Investment was not really what these students wanted or needed to hear, so we experimented a little bit more. We came back with a financial-literacy program, and then we came out with our entrepreneurship curriculum.
Q. Why is financial literacy important for high-school students?
A. We live in an economy and in a world that is based on overconsumption, asking you to buy this T-shirt or new model of Nike Air Force Ones because your old pair is out of fashion, or to take out more credit. There’s a lot of pits to fall into, and it’s easy to overspend your money. One of the strong roots of a person is to be able to manage your finances personally. It’s important to be able to understand what the college-loan process is like, and how to manage a bank account. You’ve got to really take a moment to think, OK, how can I best spend this money to advance myself forward?
Q. How do you communicate about fiscal responsibility with students from inner-city schools?
A. We use common day-to-day examples. We don’t say, Here’s this crazy concept you have to learn about. First it’s about the goal. Maybe it’s that you want those Air Force Ones. Maybe you want to visit your aunt in the next state over, and you need to save a little money to do that. Everything we do is designed to get them to achieve that tangible success. Secondly, in the classroom we’re always using real-world examples, so we might compare Dennis Rodman and Michael Jordan. How Dennis Rodman blew his fortune away in just a few years, spending millions on ridiculous things, whereas Michael Jordan took that and built up a huge business empire and has remained very successful. It’s about goal setting and role models for us.
Q. Are undergraduates qualified to teach financial literacy to high-school students growing up in economically depressed neighborhoods?
A. We’re still in the process of making our own mistakes with our finances. But if we put a mentor in a classroom who is only two to three years older than the students we’re teaching, and they’re working together to achieve a certain goal, students will listen to them as friends, and as somebody who’s working in their best interest. The other thing is that these are very simple concepts. You don’t have to hold a Ph.D. in economics to be financially literate. The hard thing is getting someone to take those ideas and translate them into action. But when they have mentors, all of a sudden there’s a strong social impetus for them to act.
Q. What has working in urban schools taught you?
A. You often have a tendency to walk into these classrooms with the attitude that you’re going to teach something to them at the end of the day. What I’ve fundamentally learned is that these students are our partners, and that if you trust them with extraordinary deeds, they will always rise up to the occasion.
Q. Has your work in poor urban areas changed the way you think about financial policies in and outside the classroom?
A. It has to a certain extent. We often look up to the financial system as sort of this great behemoth that’s only controlled by a select few, the power brokers in Washington and Wall Street. Working in urban classrooms, watching the ripple effect that a few financially literate students can have on their homes and throughout their communities throughout the years, has made me believe much more in the power of the group in affecting the economy.
