Bad Advice for Students

Posted by: Meredith K. | Dec 27,2007

Everyday, I search around for interesting tidbits online about how credit cards affect college students and college grads.  This little item in a small local paper made me laugh:

“While redeeming holiday gift cards from Visa, MasterCard and American Express for iPods, clothing and DVDs sounds like a blast, investing the dollars behind those cards in a college education brings a much greater return on investment.

"At the Pinal County Community College District - better known as CAC - students can use gift cards from credit card companies to begin their higher education journey - or to just pay their spring semester tuition.”

It just makes you all warm and fuzzy, doesn’t it?  OK, now let’s consider how much most students get from a gift card every Christmas.  Maybe I’m missing something, but have you ever gotten a gift card for, say $4000?  I mean, I haven’t.  The most I’ve gotten is $100 at a time.  That’s hardly going to pay for much of tuition.  I imagine that most college students are in the same boat.  It’s a nice idea and all, but hardly practical.  My guess is that any student who is getting a gift card in the thousands of dollars probably has a family who can afford tuition outright.

I sincerely hope my advice here has been a been more usable.  Really, this “plan” is just a way for a college to get students’ money.  Maybe this particular community college has fallen on hard times, I don’t know.  But there’s good advice and there’s a pipe dream.  This is one of those ideas that sounds nice but is pretty inadequate.  

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