Relationships between College Students' Credit Card Debt, Undesirable Academic Behaviors and Cognitions, and Academic Performance.

The acquisition of credit card debt by college students has long been a topic of concern. This study explores relationships among debt, undesirable academic behaviors and cognitions, and academic performance, through surveys of 338 students in a public university, replicating two past measures of credit card debt and creating new measures of students' delinquency, undesirable academic cognitions or behaviors, and academic performance. This study suggests that students' financial woes are related to how they allocate time and energy in college, as well as how well they perform in their classes and presumably how much they learn. This area has not been studied extensively, particularly in relation to impact on college persistence and graduation rates. Data are cross-sectional, so inferences of causality cannot be made; however, suggestions for future research are discussed. Introduction Explosive increases in the cost of a college education continue to hamper the economic recovery of the United States, and the level of personal debt incurred by students during their college years imposes a burden that lasts for decades. Recent changes to the interest rates in college loan programs make headlines, and economists predict continued increases in tuition as the federal and state governments contribute less to the cost of higher education. Today's new college graduate is likely to enter the workforce with an average of $25,250 in student loan debt (The Project on Student Debt, 2011). This number is not inclusive of all debt students incur over their college years, but reflects primarily monies borrowed through formal educational loan programs, and not credit card debt, which poses its own risks to students' long term success. Credit card debt among undergraduate college students has become a major problem on university campuses in the U.S. A 2009 study by Sallie Mac, the nation's leading provider of saving- and paying-for-college programs, reported that student debt averaged $2200 (Sallie Mac, 2009). Eighty-four percent of undergraduates carried at least one card, and only 17% of students paid off all their cards each month. Nearly one-third put their tuition on their credit card, and 92% charge direct education expenses to credit cards. All of these numbers represent increases since Sallie Mae's 2004 study. While some research has attempted to address the question of what factors contribute to students' accumulation of debt, much less has been done to explore the possible relationships between debt and students' academic behaviors such as studying and missing classes. When students accumulate debt to a problematic level, they can respond in two ways: increasing income by getting jobs, working more hours, or borrowing; and/ or engaging in various forms of dysfunctional behaviors such as drinking. Either response could negatively impact study and attendance behaviors and, eventually, grade point average and learning, time in college, and dropping or "stopping" out of college. The purposes of this study were to (1) explore the relationships between students' financial situations and their academic behaviors and performance, as well as felt anxiety and coping behaviors; and (2) develop better measures of some concepts in this area, particularly students' perceptions of their levels of financial difficulty and the undesirable academic behaviors they may engage in. Better understanding in these areas could lead to improvements in student persistence and time to graduation and more effective guidance for universities, parents, and students. Background Predictors of Debt. A number of studies have explored the potential causes of student debt. First, most studies in this area have attempted to predict student debt based on various demographic characteristics. Generally, older students accumulate more debt (Hayhoe et al., 2005; Jones, 2005; Norvilitis et al., 2006); this is consistent with findings by Pinto et al. …