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Banks and Colleges Against Students

Banks paying colleges for info on students who rack up credit card debt.

The Nation

June 8, 2010

A new report from the Huffington Post Investigative Fund has found that some of the nation’s largest and most elite universities stand to gain millions of dollars from selling the names and addresses of students and alumni to credit card companies while granting the companies special access to school events.

Seventeen contracts obtained by the Investigative Fund from schools and their alumni associations detail the special access granted to banks, such as allowing them to set up booths at football games. All of the agreements call for colleges to provide students’ names, phone numbers and addresses. These little-known agreements have enriched schools and banks at a time when young people are already borrowing at record levels.

Read the HP report for the details of this increasingly widespread tactic that is helping send more college kids into penury.

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