Factors Influencing Systematic Financial Management Among Students.

For nearly four decades, scholars from various disciplines have studied university students' financial management characteristics, primarily examining university students’ knowledge of financial management issues, but occasionally considering their attitudes or behaviors. In recent years there has been an outpouring in research projects examining university students' financial management characteristics. No studies were found that simultaneously, examined students' financial attitudes, knowledge, and behavior, nor did the literature reveal research focused on the subjects of this study: students enrolled at public universities in the state of Kelantan. The purpose of this study, which was guided by three research questions, was to examine the personal finance attitudes, behaviors, and knowledge levels of undergraduate students in a selected public university in Kelantan. Online and offline surveys were employed for data collection public university in Kelantan was included in the study, 300 undergraduate students were stratified sampled, and 231 (77%) usable surveys were completed. Data were primarily quantitative in nature and were analyzed through basic qualitative techniques. All research questions, however, were answered through descriptive statistics, Pearson’s correlation, or ANOVA procedures. Based on Pearson’s correlation test, the majorities of the correlation values between Financial Attitude, Behavior, Knowledge and Management variables are above 0.60 and lower than 0.80 whereby the highest correlation (r=0.789), p<0.01 is between Financial Knowledge and Financial Management. This shows that financial knowledge is the biggest factor determining the systematic financial management among undergraduate students in a selected public university in the state of Kelantan. This also means that there is a moderate significant positive relationship between these two variables. According to Branch (1990), the correlations that fall between +0.61 and +0.80 indicate moderate association between two variables. Moreover, the correlation value between Financial Behavior and Financial Management is 0.684 and the correlation value between Financial Attitude and Financial Management is 0.593, which is slightly less than 0.60 making the correlation between these two variables slightly weak. It was concluded that public universities and higher institutions should implement financial management initiatives to fulfill their distinctive missions and prepare graduates for successful stewardship of fiscal resources, emphases that could become a hallmark of Malaysian higher education.