If credit card banks have friends anywhere, they're in Delaware, home to four of the five biggest credit card banks. But even there, the industry has been taking heat for its efforts to sell cards to students. Activists at the University of Delaware and legislators upset by credit card offers to their own teens are pushing to restrict card solicitors at public universities. But credit cards are necessary for students, argues David Bakerian, who runs the Delaware Bankers Association.
Some kids use their cards to pay tuition and buy books.
These cards help people establish credit. The relationship survived the bank's 1998 decision to reduce the alumni cut of the charges incurred by 140,000 Penn State graduates and 20,000 students who hold MBNA cards. They have the MBNA America Hall building they built for the business department, they have the MBNA Career Services Center, they hire a lot of grads, they employ a lot of students part time. The school opposes a legislative proposal to ban card solicitors. Credit lenders employ more than 18,000 workers in Wilmington and its suburbs, more than half at MBNA alone.