I don't mean this in a snarky way at all but: aren't you talking about home economics rather than economics as a discipline? I've read through the Intro to Economics textbook, and it's not at all the practical guidebook to personal finance you seem to be asking for.

It might be possible to put together a class that would teach financial/economic concepts in terms of things relevant to an individual's finances. For instance: teach discounted cash flow analysis by explaining how it can be used to help value a stock, or to compare two different real estate investments, or to decide whether going to grad school would be worthwhile given assumed costs and future income stream. (Although universities might not want students to be too astute about the last item...)

The problem with a pure "home economics" class, to use Luther's terminology, is that it may tend to lack intellectual substance and to descend to the level of a certain very irritating personal-finance commentator who holds forth on TV. The problem with a traditional economics class is that it is too abstract to capture the interest of many students, and does not easily couple to their day-to-day financial decisions. Maybe there is a blending possible.

One big obstacle to the teaching of finance/economics is the in math that afflicts so many Americans. It's probably impossible to think about financial matters coherently without having at least some level of comfort in working with numbers and symbolic representations of numbers.

David -- Agreed. The article addresses the mathematical deficits that underwrite financial illiteracy. Many colleges and universities don't take the responsibility to graduate numerate students very seriously at all.

On the subject of Econ 101 vs. training in more practical skills -- the article notes the students need both. Students today can't balance their checkbooks and don't understand what compound interest is -- which doesn't help them with staying out of debt. But they also don't understand the difference between socialism and capitalism, don't grasp how taxation works, don't know what causes inflation, and on and on and on.