Credit card issuers have teamed up with Taiwanese universities to profit from getting cash-strapped college students hooked on swiping plastic. And with schools nationwide set to start the fall semester in the next few weeks, a new throng of potential customers stands ready to start out their adult lives by digging a deep financial hole.
This comes in direct contrast to the apparent policy trend on US university campuses. Many US schools -- after nearly two decades of allowing credit-card peddlers and college students to mix freely on campuses -- have learned a sad lesson from the volatile combination.
According to a critical 1999 study from Georgetown University sociologist Robert Manning and the Consumer Federation of America, past studies of students and credit cards have failed to report on the seriousness of the problem.
"The unrestricted marketing of credit cards on college campuses is so aggressive that it now poses a greater threat than alcohol or sexually transmitted diseases," Manning said.
Nearly 500 US colleges and universities last year took heed of the call and banned credit-card marketers from their campuses. In addition, the US Congress and several state legislatures have climbed on board with legislation that will curb the marketing and issuing of cards to college students.
Manning said "financial naivete" was behind the growing student credit-card debt dilemma, as well as "the extension of unaffordable credit lines, increasing education-related expenses and peer pressure to spend."
While the cost of a college education in Taiwan is a mere fraction of the cost of obtaining a degree in a US school, the practice of encouraging card use by the education system itself may be a recipe for disaster here. It remains to be seen if Taiwanese students are any more financially mature than their US counterparts, or whether Taiwan officials -- new to the potential problems associated with student credit-card use -- will learn from the tough lessons their American counterparts have learned.
US educators say the credit fallout results in students reducing course load to work more hours at a part-time jobs and applying for student loans to pay off the debt they've run up on credit cards. Many exit school life thousands of dollars in the red. On average US students carry a monthly debt of US$2,600. The push over past decades to get US students hooked has succeeded, with a whopping 78 percent of all university students choosing to pay with plastic.
But the numbers come with a price tag for US schools too: many facilities are finding it necessary to allocate increasing amounts of cash to fund the rising demand for student credit counseling services. The seemingly insurmountable debt have triggered several student suicides in the US.
The first signs of trouble from the local student credit push have apparently not appeared on university campuses, but rather on the home front.
"We get lots of complaints from parents seeking to limit student access to credit cards," Tom Huang (
Taiwanese parents are not only outraged at the credit card offensive going on at college campuses, they are tired of being asked to foot the bill.
"Parents think card companies are irresponsible ... and they don't want their children to have a bad credit record, so they pay the bill."
A single payment missed will place a black mark on a student's credit record for five years, according to a Chinatrust Commercial Bank (
The surging number of complaints from parents has spurred the bureau to "request the Banker's Association (銀行公會) to self-regulate its behavior and limit the number of promotions targeting students," Huang said. The association is the official bridge to all of Taiwan's banks, public and private.
But banks such as Chinatrust -- the largest issuer of credit cards in Taiwan -- don't appear to be heeding the appeal.
At present, Chinatrust has deals with nine schools to issue cards branded with the university name. And the schools -- keen to beef-up university coffers -- are all too ready to encourage the use of their university-branded cards on campus.
For example, Taiwan's top university -- National Taiwan University -- promotes the cards to all its students and skims a sweet 1.5 percent of total sales from the Chinatrust deal, according to a former university official.
Multiply that number by China-trust's 90,000 student cards in circulation and the attraction becomes obvious.
And for those students who failed to do their homework and read the fine print of the card's minimum payment agreement, Chinatrust passes out the lesson university educators have yet to teach -- financial responsibility.
BYPASSING CHINA TARIFFS: In the first five months of this year, Foxconn sent US$4.4bn of iPhones to the US from India, compared with US$3.7bn in the whole of last year Nearly all the iPhones exported by Foxconn Technology Group (富士康科技集團) from India went to the US between March and last month, customs data showed, far above last year’s average of 50 percent and a clear sign of Apple Inc’s efforts to bypass high US tariffs imposed on China. The numbers, being reported by Reuters for the first time, show that Apple has realigned its India exports to almost exclusively serve the US market, when previously the devices were more widely distributed to nations including the Netherlands and the Czech Republic. During March to last month, Foxconn, known as Hon Hai Precision Industry
Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電) and the University of Tokyo (UTokyo) yesterday announced the launch of the TSMC-UTokyo Lab to promote advanced semiconductor research, education and talent development. The lab is TSMC’s first laboratory collaboration with a university outside Taiwan, the company said in a statement. The lab would leverage “the extensive knowledge, experience, and creativity” of both institutions, the company said. It is located in the Asano Section of UTokyo’s Hongo, Tokyo, campus and would be managed by UTokyo faculty, guided by directors from UTokyo and TSMC, the company said. TSMC began working with UTokyo in 2019, resulting in 21 research projects,
Ashton Hall’s morning routine involves dunking his head in iced Saratoga Spring Water. For the company that sells the bottled water — Hall’s brand of choice for drinking, brushing his teeth and submerging himself — that is fantastic news. “We’re so thankful to this incredible fitness influencer called Ashton Hall,” Saratoga owner Primo Brands Corp’s CEO Robbert Rietbroek said on an earnings call after Hall’s morning routine video went viral. “He really helped put our brand on the map.” Primo Brands, which was not affiliated with Hall when he made his video, is among the increasing number of companies benefiting from influencer
Quanta Computer Inc (廣達) chairman Barry Lam (林百里) yesterday expressed a downbeat view about the prospects of humanoid robots, given high manufacturing costs and a lack of target customers. Despite rising demand and high expectations for humanoid robots, high research-and-development costs and uncertain profitability remain major concerns, Lam told reporters following the company’s annual shareholders’ meeting in Taoyuan. “Since it seems a bit unworthy to use such high-cost robots to do household chores, I believe robots designed for specific purposes would be more valuable and present a better business opportunity,” Lam said Instead of investing in humanoid robots, Quanta has opted to invest
RSS