Back when Congress passed laws and didn’t get stuck dealing with crazies or demonstrating impeccable map-drawing talents, it enacted a piece of legislation that will severely restrict the marketing and terms of credit cards, especially for college students. While the changes won’t come into effect until February, meaning there is still time for the ever-present credit card marketing tent to make an appearance at most big-time college football games, you won’t be seeing any Mastercards at March Madness.

As a great story by the Atlanta Journal-Constitution highlights, banning on-campus marketing, and restricting card eligibility can’t come soon enough. The paper reached out to Georgia Tech, the University of Georgia, and Georgia State University to find out what kinds of deals these schools were getting from credit card companies in exchange for selling student information and allowing on-campus marketing.

The findings weren’t pretty:

• In exchange for a guaranteed $1 million annual payment, the University of Georgia gives Bank of America the contact information for students, parents, donors, and others. The school guarantees it will provide up to 180,000 names annually. The university also allows Bank of America to use information tables and posters on campus.
• Georgia State is guaranteed to receive at least $525,000 from Bank of America by 2014, an amount that is determined by giving the school $1 per each account and slightly less than 1/2 a percent of the retail purchases made by students.
• Georgia State student credit cards have to carry a rate of 15.99 percent, versus 9.99 percent for alumni and adults.

These deals all show that some of the largest institutions in the state of Georgia made arrangements with financial institutions that actually allowed the schools to profit from their student’s indebtedness. These contracts surely represent financial conflicts of interest that should raise concerns about whether schools really do have their students’ best interests at heart.

The Journal-Constitution story also highlight a major problem with credit card deals—their opacity. Agreements between institutions and financial companies are often done through a school’s alumni association—a third-party affiliate that is often not subject to open records laws because it is technically a private, not-for-profit organization. Having these groups act as a shield for credit card deals means that significant legwork is required to find out the ways in which these agreements could work to the detriment of students. The Journal-Constitution, for example, couldn’t get the credit card contract from the Georgia Tech Alumni Association for just this reason.

Fortunately, a provision in the credit card legislation will pierce this veil by requiring institutions and their affiliates to report the terms and conditions of their credit card deals. But until that requirement comes into effect, we will have to rely on the hard work of newspapers and other publications to shine a light on more of these credit card deals with questionable incentives.
And also hope that credit card companies don’t use this year’s college football season as a chance for one last hurrah to use T-shirts and towels to sign students up.