College Credit

Fuller is still not sure how the credit card issuer knew she was a student. The College of the Mainland never gives out students' names; it's one of the few colleges in the area that doesn't even allow credit card vendors on campus. But the companies can access a credit report, and Fuller's student loans would show up there.

In a matter of weeks, Fuller fell in love with her credit card -- not that she knew that much about how it worked. Growing up in Texas City, she'd taken sex education and drug awareness classes in school. But no one had ever explained what it meant to be financially literate. When her mother used a credit card to pay for something, she would remind her daughter not to tell her father about it. Credit cards were exciting little things, so exciting that they had to be kept secret. Above all, Fuller thought credit cards meant "buy now, pay later." It wasn't until months after getting her first card that she realized if you didn't pay off your balance in full at the end of each month, you'd have to pay interest.

"I didn't understand what finance charges were," she says, shaking her head. "I just knew there was a plus $45 on my bill."

The Visa card, and the thrill that came with using it, led her to apply for store credit cards. Soon, she was receiving applications for other major cards in the mail, and she applied and got accepted for those too, despite the fact that her income was only that of a part-time waitress. It was fun and adult to go to a bar and pay for everyone's drinks. It was easy to hand over the card and not think about where the money would come from. Mostly, says Fuller, "it was like a high."

The rush Fuller got from spending money is common, and those of college age can be especially prone to it, says Kristin Kassaw, assistant professor of psychiatry at Baylor College of Medicine. Kassaw, who has studied shopping addiction, says the pleasure of spending can develop into such a bad habit that people buy clothing and never even remove the price tags.

"There's probably a neurochemical basis for it, and there's also a cultural basis for it," says Kassaw. "If you think about the things people buy, they usually buy things that increase their self-esteem, items associated with status…In college, you're in a new environment, you're with people you don't know, having to re-establish yourself outside the nest. If you have low self-esteem and you're trying to re-establish yourself outside the nest, that can lead to trouble. And no one in college is thinking, 'Oh, I'm going to want to buy a house, I'm going to want to buy a car, and all of this debt will affect my ability to do that.' "

And bad credit card habits in college can only get worse under the pressure of stepping out into the real world. Twenty-nine-year-old Chelsea, who doesn't want her real name printed, thought she'd take advantage of her time at the University of Texas to build her credit.

"As long as I didn't need to pay a fee to get the card, I signed up for it," she says. "They had booths at schools, I got offers in the mail. [I thought] in the future I would have a job that could pay for a lot of different things."

Of course, much of Chelsea's credit card debt comes from preparing for her first job as a high-powered consultant for an IT firm. She felt like she had to get the right place, the right car, the right suits. There were Palm Pilots and cell phones and pagers to be bought. Now she's paying down $10,000 in credit card debt.

"The thing I regret, in retrospect, is that I thought I would enjoy my job more," she says. "In hindsight I wish I hadn't committed myself so far by getting into debt to a job."

Sociologist Robert Manning argues that credit card issuers prey on most college students' lack of foresight. Now a professor of humanities at the Rochester Institute of Technology in New York, Manning has appeared on national television programs such as 60 Minutes II and Good Morning America to argue against credit card companies' getting into bed with colleges. He's also testified before the U.S. House Financial Services Committee, and founded a company that develops financial education programs for nonprofit organizations.

"Instead of going to South Padre Island for spring break, now you go to Paris," says Manning of the spend-more-to-be-more mentality he says is spreading on college campuses. "It's called a gold card, right?"

Manning also suggests that the rising cost of college education has pushed some kids into believing a credit card is a must to finance their education -- or at least to pay for necessities like books.

"Credit card debts are being 'revolved' or paid off with federal student loans or even with private debt consolidating loans," he writes in Credit Card Nation. "For growing numbers of students, credit cards are becoming a savior for financing their educations -- especially in public schools. For others, the initial freedom offered by credit cards may become financial shackles by the end of their college career."