Are College Students Handling Credit Cards Responsibly?

There is always great deal of controversy about college students and credit cards. Many people feel like young college students are left hung out to dry with these student credit cards. While I certainly share the concern about setting up college students for failure right from the beginning, we may be failing to provide these students with as much credit as they deserve.

According to Carol Kaplan from the American Bankers Association (ABA), only 50% of the American public in general is paying its bills on time while 63% of college students are taking care of their credit card bills responsibly. Kaplan says that “[it] could be because college students don’t have as many responsibilities, like having a house and kids.”

Maybe, maybe not. Why can’t college students simply be given credit where credit is due? (No pun intended) Has anyone every considered that maybe, these young adults are a little bit more responsible than what we might think?

Kaplan says that most of the debt that students are carrying on their cards is related to school expenses. While it pains me think that students would have to pay for their books and other school expenses with their credits cards, isn’t it good to find out that the majority of the debt isn’t the result of paying for fast food and beer?

There is no doubt that there are students out there who are using their cards irresponsibly but, statistically, no worse than the general public.  In fact, according to the data, it appears that college students are much more responsible about their credit cards than the rest of us.

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This entry was posted on Wednesday, January 23rd, 2008 at 9:00 pm and is filed under Tips & Advice. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.