Students Reach Record-High Levels of Credit Card Debt
College students are piling up alarming amounts of credit card debt,
according to a recent survey by student loan company Sallie Mae, which suggests that not only are more students relying on credit cards to
pay for their rising college costs, but that more students are charging more frequently (“Average College Credit Card Debt Rises With
Fees, Tuition,” April 13, 2009, USA Today).
“The message is clear,” said Edmund Mierzwinski, consumer program director for the U.S. Public Interest Research Group. “Students are
carrying more debt on credit cards, and more students are paying for education on credit cards.”
Sallie Mae’s survey of 1,200 private student loan applicants found that 84 percent of undergraduate students had at least one credit card, a
76-percent increase from 2004 when the survey was last conducted. The survey also revealed that students are carrying an average $3,173 in
credit card debt — the highest level seen since the data was first collected in 1998.
Financial aid experts attribute these increases, in part, to the fact that college tuition and fees have increased 439 percent over the past
25 years and that the average median family income has not kept pace, rising only 147 percent by comparison, according to the National
Center for Public Policy & Higher Education (“Study: Undergrads Relying on
Credit at Record Levels,” Creditcards.com, April 13, 2009).
In fact, students in the survey cited not having enough “savings or financial aid to cover all the costs” of college as their number one
reason for taking out a credit card, a problem that has been exasperated by the fact that private student loan lenders have scaled back
lending and tightened their credit standards due to the waning credit markets.
Because lenders have severely limited students’ access to private student loans, students have more often been charging textbooks, room and
board, and schools supplies to credit cards. In 2008, students charged an average of $2,200 in educational expenses on their cards, a
134-percent increase compared to four years ago.
Once considered the “lender of last resort,” says Kalman Chany, president of Campus Consultants, a college funding advisor, credit cards are
now higher up in the hierarchy of students’ college funding sources. “If (students) can’t get private loans, they turn to credit
cards.”