ORIGINAL RESEARCH article
Front. Educ.
Sec. Higher Education
Financial literacy and personal financial management in Public Administration students: A case study in Villa Serrano
Provisionally accepted
Mercedes Gaitan-Angulo1*
Melva Inés Gómez-Caicedo2
Erick Lambertine3
Johemir Perez4,5
Carlos Arturo Téllez Bedoya6
Paula Robayo-Acuña7- 1Escuela Nacional de Carabineros "Alfonso López Pumarejo" Dirección de Educación Policial, Bogota-Faca, Colombia
- 2Fundacion Universitaria Los Libertadores, Bogotá, Colombia
- 3Universidad San Francisco Xavier de Chuquisaca, Sucre, Bolivia
- 4Corporacion Universitaria Minuto de Dios, Bogotá, Colombia
- 5Corporación Universitaria Minuto de Dios, Bogota,, Bogota, Colombia
- 6Universidad Militar Nueva Granada, Bogotá, Colombia
- 7Corporacion Universitaria de Asturias, Bogotá, Colombia
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Financial education as an interdisciplinary field has been evolving in recent years in order to respond to contemporary organizational needs. This research aims to analyze how financial education influences the financial decision-making of university students, highlighting the urgency of curricular interventions adapted to local socio-economic realities. To this end, a metadata-based review of documents published over a period of 20 years (2005 - 2024) is generated, covering a total of 670 documents from the scientific database Scopus, "The metadata analysis allowed us to identify thematic trends in previous publications, serving as a basis for the design of the instruments applied in the fieldwork". In addition, given that the article presents a case study, structured surveys and semi-structured interviews were applied to assess financial knowledge, attitudes and practices of students of the Management and Public Administration degree at the San Francisco Xavier University of Chuquisaca, Villa Serrano campus, in financial education and personal economic management. The results reveal that 75% of the students have low credit knowledge and 80% face difficulties in saving, showing limited management skills and inadequate financial habits, and 83% of those surveyed expressed the need to incorporate financial education content into the university curriculum. At the same time, a specific programmer proposal was positively evaluated by experts in the field. These results highlight a critical training gap that could negatively influence students' economic decision-making skills in their future professional life. In this sense, it is concluded that the systematic integration of financial literacy programs in higher education is essential to foster economic autonomy, effective financial planning and the long-term well-being of future professionals.
Keywords: decision-making3, financial dependency7, financial education1, investment5, learning4, personalfinancial management6, savings2
Received: 19 Nov 2025; Accepted: 14 Jan 2026.
Copyright: © 2026 Gaitan-Angulo, Gómez-Caicedo, Lambertine, Perez, Téllez Bedoya and Robayo-Acuña. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
* Correspondence: Mercedes Gaitan-Angulo
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