What's Your Score? Educating College Students about Credit Card Debt

Abstract:     
This article is a contribution to a symposium, "I Buy Therefore I am: Consequences of the Consumer Lending Revolution." The article addresses the proliferation of credit card use by college students. Analyzing some of the basic characteristics of two major participants in this phenomenon - college student debtors and bank creditors - the authors conclude that special attributes of each, on the one hand, raise the question of whether regulatory intervention is appropriate, and, on the other hand, dictate some of the limits of such regulation. The authors survey the federal and state legislative and regulatory initiatives addressing this issue, concluding that most focus on encouraging financial education by colleges. The authors conclude by describing the financial education initiatives being pursued by the Credit Card Project of The Saint Paul Foundation, an intra-industry coalition of credit card issuers, credit bureaus and scoring agencies, nonprofit credit counselors, educators, university representatives, ethicists, regulators, students, and community activists, and the interesting results generated by these initiatives.

Number of Pages in PDF File: 33

Keywords: consumer debt, consumer law, consumer credit, credit cards, student debt, financial education, credit regulation, credit bureaus, credit counseling

Accepted Paper Series