by Nathan Perkins

Created on: August 30, 2008

Giving credit cards to colleges students is one way that colleges and banks have scratched each others backs in recent years. But I do not feel it is in the best interest of the college, the bank and certainly not in the best interest of the student when credit card companies targeted them.

Giving easy credit to graduates without preparing them to use it wisely may be a great way for a college to get quick easy funding from banks. It might be an easy and quick way for a bank to sell a product in bulk that has potential to provide continual revenue of interest and penalty fees. It might make a college student feel real good to leave school with a $20,000 limit, just a swipe away. But I suggest it is not good for any of the above mentioned parties.

I discovered recently that the college I went to 20 years ago is now qualifying students for a $20,000 limit on a Visa Card. I was angry and felt a major concern about the wisdom in this act. I looked into the reasoning and it was simply that Visa contributes a large sum of money to the college for every account set up.

Visa wins because they automatically get numerous accounts with little effort and the likelihood of large interest payment returns in the future from those just learning about how credit works. The College wins because they get money from Visa for each card and it is a real easy fund raiser.

However, in this case, the students loose because they are being targeted for the causes of both the bank and the college. Many of students are not ready to handle such accessible credit. Most of them will end up paying high interest and penalties to the bank because of faults, failures and bad planning on their part.

To target students for easy money is not in the bank's best interest. But I think the colleges and banks could do good by targeting the collage age for the sake of teaching them wise and careful borrowing practices.

They could in turn reward students with cards that match their completion of classes on using credit and money management. The reward may be credit limits and interest rates that complement the student's proven credit use competency.

This would be good for all the parties involved.

Recently the United States saw banks pay for the apparent targeting of a group of willing borrowers. These borrowers were entry level home owners. The banks provided low interest arm loans that would carry higher risks then conventional loans.

The offering of these loans was the banks way of selling a product in bulk

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