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Robert D. Manning, PhD
and
Ray Kirshak, PhD Professors John M. Barron and Michael E. Staten's article in the previous issue of JSFA, "Usage of Credit Cards Received through College Student-Marketing Programs," purports to "provide benchmark measures of college student credit card usage" (p.7). Based on empirical analyses of proprietary industry data, they conclude that "There is no evidence... that young adults who received credit cards through student marketed programs are misusing cards so frequently as to warrant singling them out as a group for special protections from marketing solicitations" (p. 25). Their key assertions, which portray on-campus credit card marketing campaigns and rising student debt levels as relatively benign trends that merely mirror patterns of older adults, contrast sharply with a growing body of academic research on this topic. Accordingly, the central question of this essay is whether the authors' conclusions are naïve (due to their lack of examination of the numerous studies in the academic literature), misguided (arising from methodological misspecifications that produced empirically inaccurate results), or implicitly politically motivated due to their personal ties to the financial services industry through research grants, paid consultancies, and public policy advocacy. Indeed, we believe that it is imperative to examine the systematic flaws of this study in order to better inform the higher education community about the increasingly important public policy debates arising from the social consequences of student credit card debt. A brief history: Marketing credit cards on campus Methodological Deficiencies: Misspecification or Misdirection? Academic Scholarship or Advocacy Research?
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