College Board is rolling out Business with Personal Finance this fall, pairing the new course with Cybersecurity as part of a broader push into career-focused Advanced Placement offerings for the coming school year. David Coleman, who has led the organization since 2012, cast the business course as a practical response to what he said students and families are asking for now.
“ Business with Personal Finance is one of two new career-focused courses we’re rolling out for the coming school year,” Coleman said, adding that students in the class will learn how to think strategically, manage money and teams, and turn ideas into action. He described the course as rigorous and deeply practical, saying it would help students apply those principles to their own financial lives and build real confidence and economic agency.
For College Board, the launch is a notable step beyond the traditional lineup. Coleman said he sees business as “a new liberal art for our time,” arguing that understanding business and personal finance gives students tools to bring their passions into the world. He also tied the new offering to a wider concern among young people about job losses from artificial intelligence, saying the course is meant to give students confidence to adapt to a changing future.
The organization said it had been developing the course with employers and colleges for the better part of three years. Coleman said Business with Personal Finance merges entrepreneurship and financial capability, and that it gives students a credential with value for both employers and colleges. He also said the course is more like a business school class in entrepreneurship and financial management than Economics, though many students will likely begin with Business with Personal Finance and later move on to an economics course.
The move lands at a time when exams remain one of the most influential and oft-controversial forces shaping high schools. College Board is trying to widen that reach by adding courses aimed more directly at work and money, not just traditional academic subjects. That approach also fits Coleman’s own history: before taking over College Board in 2012, he helped drive the Common Core State Standards, and he has long argued that schools should prepare students for both college and the labor market.
The new course arrives with a simple premise behind it. Coleman said students everywhere want to know how to make money and keep it, and that business is the most popular college major. Yet, he said, just 20 percent of U.S. students take a business course in high school, and access to quality personal finance education remains uneven. Business with Personal Finance is the organization’s answer to that gap, and if it works, it could become one of the clearest signs yet that the program is moving beyond the classroom toward the first decisions students make after graduation.
