Advocate Online

When students arrive on college campuses across our nation, they are bombarded with credit card applications. Applications are stuffed into student’s book purchase bags and stacked in student unions on tables and near communal areas where students tend to congregate.

Credit card companies have card table displays, offering free hats, T-shirts, or other token gifts for the student to sign the application. Some students have no interest in a credit card, but can’t refuse a free T-shirt or the peer pressure to do what “everyone is doing.” When the credit card arrives in the student’s campus mail, some are generally surprised and start using the card.

One student’s story is indicative of the problem. This student didn't believe he signed up for a credit card. He thought he’d entered a drawing when he filled out a small card in exchange for a T-shirt. He didn't realize it was an application for a credit card. When the credit card arrived, he thought he’d won. He used it and was very surprised when a bill arrived.

He ignored the bill and with interest, collection fees, and penalties now has a much larger debt. Plus, his credit is compromised for seven years. The card issuer had even raised the interest rate. The student was forced to cut back his course load, find a job, and pay off the credit card. He also found as he tried to move out of the dorm and rent an apartment off campus that the bad credit rating hurt him.

When the student discussed the issue with the credit card issuer, they suggested he ask his parents for assistance—something they should have suggested when he signed up for the card. We should ban them!

* Linda Chuhran is a part-time faculty member at Schoolcraft College, a Community College in Livonia, Michigan. She currently is working toward her Ph.D. in organizational development and leadership at Walden University.

No, credit cards are a reality our students must learn to live with.
Eric Beck *

Credit card vendors have been on my campus at least since 1989, when I was a freshman. There has to be some reason they were invited to campuses in the first place.

As a former campus manager of credit card tables, I know, for one thing, that campuses are earning a good penny from school-affiliated credit cards. But now that there has been half a generation of former college students let loose on the world without the basic concepts of credit/debt management everyone wants to yell “foul” instead of looking at any practical solutions or realities.

But banning the practice is an attempt to avoid the problem rather than provide a solution. Credit card vendors need only move across the street on many campuses to the privately owned bookstore, YMCA, or campus church. Any of these places can rent space in front of their buildings without the concern of university policy. The vendor need only entice students across the street.

If there is true concern about stemming the tide of student debt there needs to be credit/debt management initiatives established by schools. Solid credit habits can be built, with help, during college, and the benefits can be far reaching. Employers, as well as mortgage and loan companies, investigate credit histories. A poor credit rating can be of greater detriment to a student’s work prospects than a poor grade point average.

Credit card companies can lend support to this effort by providing credit specialists from their organizations to provide training. If schools can rise to the occasion of training about alcohol consumption, sexual assault, and other areas of concern then they should be able to help students learn better credit control.

* Eric Beck is coordinator for the Center for East Asian and Pacific Studies at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign. He is a member of the University of Illinois Association of Academic Professionals’ executive committee and the NEA’s Higher Education Emerging Leader Academy.