Shift On Campus From Credit Card To Debit Card Marketing

Many colleges have tightened rules on credit-card marketing on campus in order to discourage students from racking up huge amounts of debt. Now another kind of card is being pushed on campus -- with its own set of issues. This fall, financial-services companies are focusing more of their campus marketing on "prepaid debit cards," which work like standard debit cards except that they aren't linked to a traditional checking account. On the plus side students can't get into thousands of dollars of debt, as they can with credit cards. Read more at: http://online.wsj.com/article/SB122109287812921669.html

Comments

[Albert Dorian]

Yeah, credit cards for college students are a bad idea. I'm speaking from experience here. You start out responsible, but then you eventually cave in for a week and go crazy.

[Help for Credit Card Debt]

Credit cards for college students are just a bad idea - UNLESS a parent knows that the student is ultra responsible. And while a prepaid debit card is a much better answer for a college student in terms of the difficulty it provides in over-extending the limit, establishing credit is very important, and pre-paid debit cards do not build credit.

So for responsibility-challenged students, a prepaid debit card can be "training wheels" for getting a credit card.