Incentive Marketing to Innocent Students
If you have been on a college campus in last 20 years on registration day, you have probably seen table after table of credit card vendors. Each of them has a different offer, an incentive, to give the student the needed encouragement and energy they need to fill out a credit card application. Many of those colorfully festooned tables feature appealing looking upper classman hawking the importance of “building a good credit score”. Yes, a good credit score needs to be built and you need to start sometime. Common sense would dictate that sometime would be when you have a job and have the capacity to pay back the loan. That’s right, students, credit is not a gift, it’s a loan – a loan you have to pay back.
Irresponsible Marketing with Deadly Consequences
Too much unnecessary credit, too early, has mortgaged the future of too many financially illiterate, innocent college students. Consider the tragic story of college honors student Sean Moyers who, at 21, killed himself over $10,000 of credit card debt. For many students, the emotional damage that comes from too much debt is literally unbearable. Mitzi Pool was another college student who made the national news after taking her life over the shame of her credit card debt. Research is pointing to the fact that more students are now exiting college because of economic rather an academic failure.
