The Daily Illini Editorial Board
Three
very scary words: credit card debt. Either we or someone we know has
had to worry about how to prevent debt from accumulating. And as many
of us will be graduating soon and heading into a world of economic
distress, we have enough on our plates with tuition loans, not to
mention paying off our credit card bills. While it might be too late
for college seniors, an initiative proposed by State Treasurer Alex
Giannoulias to protect college students from credit card companies just
passed through the House without any opposing votes and is now on its
way to the Senate and Gov. Pat Quinn. If all this bill needed to pass
was our OK, then it would have become a law long ago. But there's no
better time than the present.
Just a few months ago,
Giannoulias came to campus to collect signatures for a petition against
credit card marketing strategies that we as college students have come
to know all too well: the "Get a free sweatshirt if you give us your
information!" and "Get a sub if you sign up for a card today!"
Unfortunately, those tactics have worked wonders and many college
students are now in debt. In fact, according to USA Today, in 2008,
college seniors with at least one credit card graduated with an average
of $4,138 in card debt. Of course, credit card debt cannot solely be
attributed to companies that solicit for students' information on
campuses. That's only a small portion of the overall problem of college
students in debt. But when credit card companies are trying to lure
students with marketing strategies like free sweatshirts and sandwiches
– especially knowing that most college students are broke – it's
getting harder and harder for students to say no.
This bill
would make it not only easier for students to say no to those marketing
tactics, but it would also make it illegal for credit card companies to
solicit college students' information on campuses. Other parts of the
bill include: prohibiting colleges from selling databases of students
names and information to card issuers, requiring schools who had
contracts with credit card issuers to disclose that information to the
public and asking schools to offer courses in financial literacy if
credit cards are marketed to undergraduates.
But like we've
said before, while this bill will take a lot of pressure off of signing
up for credit cards, it will only mitigate the problem rather than
solve it. To prevent students from getting themselves into debt, we
suggest that more educational workshops are offered by schools about
how to use credit cards wisely and how to pay the bills. Some people
might already know how to use a credit card responsibly, but it never
gets old. Credit cards aren't going away and neither is debt. We'll be
using them for a long time, so it's crucial that we learn to use them
responsibly.
