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In a typical college finance class, students may learn about investing by developing portfolios with fake money and online learning simulations. At the University of Nevada, Professor Gregory Stone has the students of his Finance 430 class investing with cold, hard cash. Whose cash exactly? A finance industry veteran, Jack McLeod, put $100,000 into an account for the senior finance students to invest how they see fit. They are the ones who do the research into various investment opportunities, and their final grades depend on the success of their investments and how well they were able to build their portfolios.

McLeod believes the exercise is a better learning experience than just using computer simulations to invest money. "Real money changes the whole perspective," he said. The investments are made with a sense of urgency and awareness, as they should be in a real-life scenario. But why would McLeod hand over $100,000 for students to potentially lose? "When I was a young man, a lot older, experienced people reached out and helped me," he told the Reno Gazette Journal. "I don't believe you go hunting with wooden rifles--you need the real thing and live ammo."

Of course the finance students in Professor Stone's class aren't completely thrown to the sharks. They are mentored by financial experts. One of those mentors is McLeod's son, Scott McLeod. He said students have told him investing with real money is a completely different experience. He said students feel more connected to what they're doing because "they are actually investing somebody's money."

Some finance students will go all the way through school but never really have the chance to deal with large amounts of real money. A major component of the class is gaining the knowledge and tools to do the research on which investments stand to make a lot of money in the near and distant future. They are, however, more focused on the near future, because their investments need to make money during the semester.

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