One week into the school year, MSU students find their mailboxes filled with advertisements for credit cards with attractive features like “No annual fee” and “Instant $3,000 credit limit.”
Sen. Alan Sanborn, R-Richmond, hopes two resolutions he introduced in the Senate Feb. 12 will help students stay out of debt.
“Credit card debt is a growing problem across the country. It’s not just limited to students,” Sanborn spokesman Andrew Doerr said.
Sanborn’s first resolution, calls upon colleges and universities across the state to provide “debt management and financial counseling services” during academic orientation.
“Our original thinking was that if you include it in orientation, people would be more likely to show up,” Doerr said.
The MSU Federal Credit Union offered seminars in the past, and so have various clubs and organizations, but no seminar has been included in yearly academic orientation activities, which currently focus only on academics.
“I can see how (debt seminars) would be beneficial,” Lyndsay Ruell, a pre-vet sophomore, said.
Glenn Stevens, executive director of the Presidents Council of State Universities of Michigan, believes debt seminars for college students would be a valuable addition to orientation weekend.
“In principle, I think this is a very good thing to do,” Stevens said.
“One of the goals of the Michigan Council for Economic Education is to help young people, students in particular, understand more about the economy and how their personal finances work into our economic structure.”
Stevens said an understanding of economic principles is a “vitally important part of one’s education.”
Sanborn’s second resolution would urge universities not to sell databases of student names and numbers to credit card companies without students’ prior consent.
Ruell said she has been plagued with numerous mailings and calls to her Gilchrist Hall dorm room since she first came to MSU in the fall of 2000.
“We’ve had zillions (of solicitors) call here,” Ruell said. “Sometimes two or three times a week.”
Dave Browner, MSU’s chief financial officer and controller said MSU does not sell the names and numbers of its students.
“However, the university has contracted with a particular credit card company to offer an alumni card to students and alumni, based on a bidding process.”
Doerr said selling student information is not an uncommon occurrence.
“This happens a lot,” Doerr said.
“As soon as that information is in their computers they can send it out as they see fit.”
But Sanborn’s resolutions are merely suggestions at this point; there is no law in place - something that doesn’t worry communication freshman Amy Burnitt.
“They don’t bother me. If I don’t want to read them I just toss them,” she said.
