Date Approved

8-4-2025

Graduate Degree Type

Project

Degree Name

Education-Higher Education (M.Ed.)

Degree Program

College of Education

First Advisor

Karyn Rabourn

Academic Year

2024/2025

Abstract

Financial wellness difficulties have increasingly been found as a trend found amongst college students in research, as loans increase and student aid decreases, research is needed to understand new approaches to financial wellness and improving this problem within higher education. This project explores financial wellness and the need for wellness support amongst first-generation college students, as they continue to face unique wellness challenges in education at disparate rates. Specifically, it focuses on Financial Self-Efficacy (FSE) as a mediating factor of financial wellness, instead of a traditional focus on purely financial literacy. Grounded in Albert Bandura’s self-efficacy theory, the First-Generation Financial Empowerment (FGFE) program is an eight-week intervention targeting FSE through mastery experiences, peer mentorship, verbal encouragement, and active strategies to reduce stress around finances. The FGFE intervention will look to take classic financial literacy fundamentals and utilize self-efficacy to develop an intervention that does not just lead to knowledge, but to a college environment that allows students to feel more capable, less stressed, and with a better chance for success and long-term wellness.

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