OSU Student-Athletes Learning How to Succeed with Money

To borrow a lyric from Bob Dylan, the times they are a-changin'.

In the world of college athletics, one of those ways is in the benefits for student-athletes.

At Oklahoma State, a significant change for the nearly 400 scholarship athletes is a new academic award in which each scholarship athlete receives $5,980 per academic year from the OSU POSSE Star Fund.

With that in mind, OSU has begun a financial literacy program for its student-athletes, something the department recognized as a significant need, according to Jawauna Harding, OSU's Associate Athletic Director for Student-Athlete Leadership and Development.

"Never before have student-athletes had such earning potential and earning power at the collegiate level," Harding said. "We felt that it was our responsibility to educate our student-athletes on the basics of finances – understanding budgeting, understanding what to do with your money and just establishing good financial habits.

"This is way for OSU Athletics to help educate our student-athletes to have better financial success while they're in college and after."

OSU mandates that in order for a scholarship athlete to receive their Star Fund payments, they must attend a financial literacy seminar or complete an online program.

To that end, OSU Athletics has partnered with Simmons Bank, one of its largest supporters, to help with the financial education. Simmons has a banking entity on campus in the Student Union, with bankers working specifically with college students.

Numerous Simmons Bank employees are part of the seminars, which cover a variety of topics, among them:

Budgeting
Avoiding bad debt
The importance of a good credit score
Taxes
Saving and investing
Fraud and identity theft

"We thought it would be a great partnership because of the proximity for our student-athletes," Harding said. "(Simmons Bank) enthusiastically partnered with us. Everyone from their president to the local banker is here educating our student-athletes and making sure they're provided expert opinions on a broad range of subject matter.

"They're doing a great job connecting with our student-athletes and providing them a wealth of financial knowledge."

Jordan Burbank, a member of the OSU Cowgirl soccer team, said the seminar was extremely beneficial.

"Simmons Bank really provided us a great opportunity to learn how to best use the resources we are given," Burbank said. "It was awesome being able to hear from professionals teaching us how to use these resources. It's already such an amazing opportunity getting the Star Fund and getting this extra information about how to handle our finances and future opportunities for them and what to be aware of was really great."

The POSSE Star Fund is just part of student-athletes' monetary potential as the NCAA now allows for athletes to profit off their name, image and likeness.

"This is new to us, and some people don't really have a good feel for having extra income," said OSU men's basketball player Tyreek Smith. "For them to teach us the ins and outs of having new income and how to save it and handle it was very interesting and important for us."

Harding said she has received the most feedback on the credit piece of the seminars, with student-athletes grasping what it is, how to use it and how a credit score can affect them.

Burbank added that budgeting is also a big focus.

"That's something that at our age we forget about doing – we just have fun spending what we got," Burbank said. "So a big takeaway was reminding us how to budget, and it was cool getting a workbook to look at it all and help with that planning."

Harding said the effects of the program are already measurable. Student-athletes take pre- and post-assessments to understand their financial confidence and following the seminars, they have seen that confidence grow.

"They better understand what goes into finances and the whole spectrum of being an adult and what they need to and should be doing in order to have financial success in the long run," Harding said.

Oklahoma State University Athletics

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