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As an avid consumer advocate in the field of credit and debt management, I have been opposed to unleashed campus credit for years.

In 2001 I began writing a series of articles opposing this trend starting with the review of a CBS special. CBS initiated their expose with the words: "Across America's college campuses, students are running up mountains of debt on credit cards - cards banks pressure them into taking. No job or income is required." (See Students Hooked on Credit)

Tragically, not too much has changed except that the trend has gotten worse. In fact, in Danny Schector's newer film, (In Debt We Trust: America Before the Bubble Bursts), an entire segment of the film discusses the issue with parents and incoming freshman. Economic guru and consumer advocate Dr. Robert Manning offers parent/student orientation on the problems of credit card use and cites examples of students with thousands of dollars of credit card debt and no income to pay it. Meanwhile right outside this orientation, numerous credit card vendors are signing up students by the scores offering them low and no-interest cards without the sales vendor even knowing how long the "special offer" lasts nor what the interest rate will be at the end of the "special".

This unconscionable exercise is repeated across the country on campus after campus after campus. But it does not end there. High schools do not fair too much better. The stats regarding high school card usage may surprise some. According to the JumpStart Coalition for Personal Financial Literacy, a nonprofit educational organization, nearly a third of high school seniors reported having a credit card of their own or one co-signed by a parent.

In 1997, I wrote an article called Credit Cards... Just Like Drugs. In it I said there was no better analogy than credit and drugs. We use it (credit) and use it and use it until we can't live without it. Yet we live in an "age of plastic" and our youth must be taught to use plastic responsibly, even if we as parents have not. Sounds reasonable, right? But how exactly do you we go about doing that?

Perhaps a debit card could be a useful "training wheels" approach for a pre-18 youth. Purchases are deducted immediately from a banking account balance and may be refused if there are not adequate funds in the account to cover the purchase. The hope is that your child will learn to use plastic in a responsible manner, while limiting the potential pitfalls that are often associated with credit cards.

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