Are Colleges Creating a Legacy of Credit Card Debt for Students and Alumni?
March 6, 2007
If you don’t graduate with credit card debt your alma mater may try and help you accumulate some once you’re gone.
Not only are some schools allowing credit card marketing to students on campus, selling their students’ personal information to credit card issuers, and failing to provide student education on the proper use of credit cards but now they’re peddling credit cards to their alumni. I recently received the offer below from the school where I earned my undergraduate degree.
I don’t know whether the school gave my information to credit card vendors while I was in school but obviously they feel comfortable doing so after graduation. They lead off the ad encouraging their alumni to carry more than one credit card. Many people graduating today already leave college with student loans and some credit card debt, why are schools pushing us to accumulate more?
The motivation behind the campaign is obvious, you can “support your alma mater” every time you swipe the card. In my opinion, most of us already helped support our school by paying thousands of dollars of tuition for four years. Why would we be interested in supporting them by giving them a cut of all credit card debt we acquire? Of course, used responsibly, alumni cards could be a simple way to support your school. However, statistics show that most of us don’t use credit cards responsibly. In light of this it seems a valid question to ask, what kind of legacy are schools leaving with their credit card policies?
Related Articles
The same legacy that they leave with their high tuition prices?
Having too many credit cards is bad is not good for your credit history but cancelling credit card isn’t good either. It’s awlays hard to find the golden mean. It’s bad to have no credit limit and it’s bad to have low credit limit. You are always on the horns of the dilemma…
If you look at student credit cards (not necessary those for alumni) and learn the ways of promotion the banks use, you will be shoked at the students’ carelessness and ignorance. They get a miserable T-shirt or a mug for application and get the months of debt and overspending! No one to open their eyes at the issue…
[…] Alumni Credit CardIt appears my alma mater has decided its okay to sell my name and address to Bank of America so I decided to look into their practices. I started off by looking for a privacy policy on the school’s website but didn’t have any luck finding one. When I visited the Alumni page I ran across an ad, asking people to sign up for the WorldPoints Platinum Plus MasterCard Credit Card. This is probably the same one that I saw the first credit application for several months back. […]