The credit card industry has made a profitable art of corralling consumers into ruinous interest rates and hidden penalties that keep even people who pay their bills permanently mired in debt. The companies are especially eager to target freshly minted college students, who are na\u00c3\u00afve in money matters and especially vulnerable to credit card offers that are too good to be true.<\/p>\n
Colleges, which often allow solicitation on campus, need to do more to protect their students from taking on credit card debt that can severely damage their economic prospects once they graduate from school and join the world of work.<\/p>\n
College students need to be told right off the bat about the dangers associated with the cards that the companies are going to throw at them once school starts. The students need to know, for example, that the penalties associated with delinquent debts will accrue to them \u201d\u201d and not to their parents, as many students seem to think. They should also be told that delinquent debts can cause their interest rates to soar not just on their credit cards, but on car loans and mortgages as well.<\/p>\n