O nível de alfabetização financeira de estudantes universitários: um estudo sobre a Fundação Escola de Comércio Álvares Penteado FECAP

Abstract

The absence of financial education throughout the K-12 experience results in most undergraduate students lacking the financial literacy needed to make better financial decisions. Studies by the OECD and Serasa Consumidor, together with other studies cited throughout this work, show there is still a long way to go to implement a strong policy for Financial Education. This study assesses the levels of financial literacy of the undergraduate students at FECAP using a questionnaire similar to the one developed by the OECD. The survey has been carried out with 564 students who attend the evening courses and are either in the first or in the last semester of undergraduate degree programs. I investigate the relations between sociodemographic variables and courses and the level of Financial Literacy. The results indicate that FECAP s students have a high level of Financial Literacy up to 2.39 points in a scale whose maximum is 3 points. That represents a performance of 79%. This result is 19 percentage points above that of a study conducted by Serasa Consumidor and IBOPE (2014), which found that individuals with higher education had a performance of 60% . Students in the senior year of college have more Financial Knowledge than the freshmen. Students of Accounting, who comprise most of the sample with 166 individuals, presented the best results regarding Financial Knowledge.This study indicates that sociodemographic factors, such as gender, age and religion are related to Financial Literacy