Colleges' debit-card deals draw scrutiny

Colleges' debit-card deals draw scrutiny

www.usatoday.com

Students just had to activate their ID as a debit card by opening a bank account promoted by the university. The school, under an exclusive deal with a bank, earned money when students swiped their cards and signed for a purchase. It also profited based on how much money students kept in their accounts...

...Banks want to attract students with debit cards — through combination ID cards — and then sell them other products, such as credit cards...

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The article explains how banks and universities have been cutting deals to promote combination debit/student ID cards. Some colleges are seeing 7-figure payouts as a result (ie. Univ. of Minnesota has a guaranteed $1 million from the banks). Now, seeing banks with their little booths and tents on college campuses is nothing new, but this debit card/student ID card is definitely a strange twist.

Every student is issued a free ID card from the Portland State University with a MasterCard logo. This ID card can then be linked to a bank account and used as a debit card. In order for students to have a logo-free ID card, they must pay $20.

The banks have decided that it's not enough to cut deals with universities to get kids into debt, but now they want to expand the revenue they are generating off of overdrafts. Students are notorious for constantly overdrafting their accounts and the banks want exclusive rights to them.

It's kind of messed up how we send kids to fairly expensive schools to prepare them to work hard to get out of the debt that they are creating for themselves while they learn. I understand that schools need money too, but there has to be better ways than this.



www.usatoday.com
(visit the link for the full news article)

Looks like the two greatest sources of debt in a persons young life are just teaming up... what do we expect?

Colleges are not schools. They're businesses. Anybody who is on the inside can attest to this.

But to actual con students into getting an 'ID' card that they can use to wrack up debt? That's pretty disgusting. Blatant financial manipulation of the students.