For those looking for the course material, I’ve posted the slides for all 10 sessions on a parallel site: http://cs007.blog
On September 26th, I had the great pleasure of officially kicking off a brand new course at Stanford University, “Personal Finance for Engineers“. The course was offered through the Computer Science department (CS 007), but was also open to undergraduate & graduate students of any major.
How quickly the quarter went. On December 6th, I gave the 10th and final lecture of the seminar. Grades were submitted by December 18th, and course evaluations were summarized and provided to lecturers by December 20th.
In the interest of learning & transparency, I thought I’d post some of the feedback here, as well as summarize a few of my own reflections on the seminar.
Summary Results: Learning Goals
Out of the 93 students who took the course, it looks like 69% (64) left feedback on the course. The following charts and material are provided anonymously by Stanford University.
The learning goals for the course were as follows:
- Expose students to a wide range of personal finance topics.
- Provide students with both practical & theoretical frameworks to make financial decisions.
- Build confidence in students on how to approach real life financial decisions.
- Provide students with content that will encourage discussions with family and / or friends.
Overall, the student feedback on these four areas were fairly consistent. A majority felt the course achieved these goals “extremely well” (highest ranking), with a large minority giving the course “very well” for these goals.
The individual comments left by students seemed to confirm these results. A few samples:
Q: What skills or knowledge did you learn or improve?
“I literally knew nothing about personal finance, but just being exposed to this material helped me ask the right questions to myself and my parents.”
“Everything — I’m a financial manager on the row and a senior, but knew next to nothing about finances. This was super super helpful.”
“I improved on a great deal in this class. From understanding behavioral finance. to deciding whether or not to rent/buy, this class truly taught me about personal finance and more.”
Summary Results: Instruction & Organization
One of the elements I underestimated when proposing this class was the amount of time it would take to prepare an 80 minute lecture every week. Converting what previously had been a 60-minute talk into a 10 seminar course proved to be a significant time commitment (one of the reasons you haven’t seen any posts on this blog since the course started).
As a result, I was particularly concerned about what the feedback would be to the course material, since most of it was new. Fortunately, the results look positive.
Individual Feedback: Student Recommendations
One of the most telling results from teaching a course at Stanford are the individual recommendations that students are asked to give about a course to future students.
Q: What would you like to say about this course to a student who is considering taking [CS 007] in the future?
These reviews confirm how much students want to learn and engage around personal finance topics. The desire is there, the fundamental problem is that few schools offer any curriculum to fulfill it.
If you are wondering, Review #12 is my Mom’s favorite.
Data: What sessions did students value most?
Stanford allows faculty to add supplementary questions to the student feedback form. I asked students specifically to name three sessions that they found most valuable, and to name a session they found least valuable.
The results were interesting. Investing was far away the seminar students found the most valuable, with compensation, real estate and debt following.
| Investing | 28 |
| Compensation | 16 |
| Real Estate | 12 |
| Debt | 10 |
| Financial Planning & Goals | 7 |
| Bonus: Crypto, VC & Derivatives | 6 |
| Behavioral Finance | 5 |
| Savings & Budgeting | 4 |
| Net Worth | 2 |
When students were asked which session was the least valuable, there were far fewer votes to count. Still, it was interesting that despite being one of the favorites, “Real Estate” was also one of the least favorites. Reading the comments, it seems as if some students felt like real estate was too far in the future to be relevant to their current situation. The students who enjoyed it clearly enjoyed the section on how to make the decision between renting & buying.
| Real Estate | 7 |
| Behavioral Finance | 5 |
| Debt | 3 |
| Compensation | 2 |
| Bonus: Crypto, VC & Derivatives | 2 |
| Savings & Budgeting | 2 |
| Financial Planning & Goals | 1 |
| Net Worth | 1 |
| Investing | 0 |
It is worth noting that 8 students actually put down that all of the sessions were valuable, so I think it is fair to say that the content was well received.
Final Thoughts & Reflections
As part of developing this course, I chose to post the slides from every seminar online within a couple of days of teaching the class. My goal was to get as many eyes as possible on the content, to ensure there were no mistakes and to get advice on places to improve it.
There was only one session that received several corrections, and that was the “Real Estate” seminar. A special thank you to those of you on Twitter who helped me improve & correct this content.
Top requests that I received for the next time I teach the class:
- PDF versions of the slides
- Voice over version of the slides
- Video of the lectures
I likely should have done all of these in 2017, but I was a bit nervous about doing this with a brand new course & course material.
The most important reflection I have on this quarter is a sincere feeling of gratitude to Stanford University for allowing me to teach this course. Mehran Sahami, the Associate Chair for Education in the Computer Science department, sponsored the course, and without him it would not have been possible. A special thank you is also due to Greylock Partners, who supported my efforts to teach this course this year.
I also would like to thank the 93 students who took the course and provided excellent feedback along the way. The course was originally opened to only 50 students, and it was incredibly gratifying to see so many students request an exception to take the class during the Fall Quarter.
If you have additional feedback or thoughts about the course, and how to broaden the reach of financial education, please feel free to reach out with comments on Twitter or LinkedIn.
Psychohistory 
Congratulations on making it through! It is a shockingly large effort to teach a class–doing so gave me a much greater appreciation for all my old instructors.
Loving the slides, Adam. It’s amazing that 3 core topics are skipped during education. Finance being one of them.