Banks and credit card companies target college students through partnerships with universities
Large public universities team up with credit companies to offer services
Meghan Pesch
Issue date: 4/18/08 Section: Features
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A recent study by the U.S. Public Interest Research Group (PIRG) found that 76 percent of college students have experienced solicitations by credit card companies on or around their college campus, and many banks have made partnerships with universities for exclusive advertisements and ATMs.
Tufts, which has not yet been swept up by such a partnership, breaks the trend prevalent among many larger universities.
At the University of Illinois (UI), students are offered free checking through the university. They can use their student identification cards at ATMs and as debit cards if they take advantage of the exclusive partnership the school has with TCF bank, a large banking chain based in Minnesota.
Aside from the student perks of the partnership, UI receives an annual donation to its scholarship fund from the bank.
In-Young Lee, a freshman at UI, said that while the partnership involves heavy advertising towards the students, many do not opt to switch to TCF if they already have an account before entering school.
"There are TCF ads on buses and all over the bookstore," she said. "Not too many people use [TCF] though, especially if they have an old account and they don't want to switch."
Those sentiments are consistent with national studies, which show that despite all the efforts made by banks and credit card companies, only 25 percent of students decide to sign up for credit cards from on-campus tabling efforts.
Besides the partnerships with universities, banks and credit card companies have designed Web sites targeting students and teamed up with Facebook.com for advertisement space. Discover and other companies have developed credit quizzes designed to test students' knowledge on credit and the economy.
While these sites do not allow students to directly sign up for the credit cards, they preach the value of earning credit at a younger age to help with larger purchases in the future.
The American Bankers Association Education Foundation has set up a national "Get Smart About Credit Day," which is held in October to help educate young adults 15 to 25 years old on how to deal with credit issues.
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