… so why aren’t we giving it to them? In this MSNBC.com article, recent college graduate Caitlin Petre practically begs for everyday, real-world financial training. Consider these key quotes from the article:

• “My friends and I are graduates of Wesleyan, Barnard, Stanford and Yale. We’ve earned 3.9 GPAs and won academic awards. Yet none of us knows what a Roth IRA is or can master a basic tax form.”
• “(We) are incredibly lucky to have gotten the educations we have. But there’s a discrepancy between what we learn in school and what we need to know for work, and there must be some way for universities to bridge this gap.”
• “College students are graduating with greater debt than ever before, yet we haven’t learned how to manage our money. We can wing it for only so long before employers start wising up to our real-world incompetence.”

This is exactly the audience CPAs everywhere are trying to reach as they preach the importance of financial literacy. The MACPA has joined the AICPA’s effort to increase the financial I.Q. of Americans from coast to coast, and the profession’s “Feed the Pig” public service campaign is encouraging young adults to save aggressively for retirement.

Caitlin’s article is evidence of the importance of these campaigns. Obviously, though, more needs to be done. Tell us what you think should happen, then sign up to join our team of financial literacy volunteers.