Chris Surprenant’s path from traditional academic philosophy to hands-on public policy work reflects a deep sense of responsibility to the community he serves. Now a professor of ethics, strategy, and public policy at the University of New Orleans and Director of the university’s Urban Entrepreneurship and Policy Institute, Surprenant spoke on The Overton Window Podcast about how his academic career shifted from traditional philosophy toward financial literacy and education reform rooted in local needs.

“I was at Tulane University for a while, and I was doing regular philosophy stuff. I was teaching logic, a course in the history of philosophy. And I had this offer to leave Tulane University and go over to the University of New Orleans.” That move placed him in an institution with a very different mission. As he describes, “the University of New Orleans is a public university that aims to serve the city of New Orleans, mostly serving lower middle class people in New Orleans, a lot of first generation college students.” Many of his students work full time and pay their own way, viewing education as a direct path to improving their families’ futures.

That reality forced a reckoning. “I felt like I needed to justify what I was researching and what I was teaching to people on the street. Why do I get tax dollars?” Abstract debates held less urgency. “Quite honestly, no one cares about the moral and political philosophy of Immanuel Kant” when compared with the problems facing the city day to day.

Surprenant began focusing on criminal justice reform, especially how laws are enforced unevenly across New Orleans neighborhoods. He points to the jail population, where people remain incarcerated simply because they cannot afford small bail amounts. That work led naturally to questions about economic opportunity.

Surprenant has seen the consequences of poor financial planning up close, particularly in higher education. “I'm a university professor. I was at a private university for a long period of time that had one of the highest tuition costs in the country.” Students routinely borrowed enormous sums without understanding how repayment would affect their future. He described situations where graduates left with “one hundred or two hundred thousand dollars in loans” and oftentimes no realistic path to pay them back.

“The decisions they're making or being pushed to make by people or institutions are honestly quite predatory,” Surprenant says.

“The reality is that the vast majority of people are very bad at managing their own finances. They're very bad at making financial decisions. They're very bad at understanding the long-term consequences of the decisions they make.” In a city where many residents are already operating with thin margins, those mistakes can be devastating and long lasting.

This work has brought him into collaboration with professional athletes such as Marques Colston, former wide receiver for the New Orleans Saints. “He thinks this is probably one of the most important issues facing the Black community right now in the United States,” Surprenant says. The two share an understanding that personal finances and how to manage them are critical skills that should be understood early.

Surprenant’s research in local schools highlights why these efforts matter. Momentum is building nationally. “Over the last five years there's been a substantial change that the vast majority of states now are requiring some type of financial literacy education.” Still, he cautions that access alone does not guarantee results.

Many students who grow up in financially unstable households are not learning these skills, while policymakers often assume schools can easily fill the gap. “The vast majority of people who are coming from families who are minimally financially responsible are getting a lot of that education at home,” he notes, leaving others at a disadvantage from the start.

His research in New Orleans schools revealed a deeper challenge. “One of the things we found is that it's not so much the course, but the teacher.” Simply standardizing curriculum produced weak outcomes. What worked were teachers who cared deeply about the material, had some background in personal finance, and connected lessons to real decisions. Effective classrooms involved “kids like actually working with money and making real decisions instead of doing simulations in the class.”

Many educators, however, are placed in impossible positions. Surprenant recalls teachers telling him, “I don't have the background to teach in this class,” “I was told to teach the class,” or “I was assigned the class, so I teach the class.” They care deeply about their students and want to improve. “We have yet to meet a teacher in some of these high schools that don't care.” Administrative pressure to satisfy state requirements often makes meaningful instruction harder. Boxes get checked, but learning suffers.

Financial literacy offers a way to reduce exploitation, expand opportunity, and give people tools to navigate systems that are often stacked against them. In New Orleans, where economic inequality intersects with race, education, and criminal justice, he views this work as a practical form of empowerment. It’s not about creating perfect financial decision makers. It’s about helping people avoid life altering mistakes and giving the next generation a better starting point than the one before.

Listen to the complete conversation on The Overton Window Podcast.

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