Get in while they’re young:

As concern over student debt levels rises, lawmakers and campuses nationwide have turned their attention to credit-card issuers and marketing practices aimed at students. California, Oklahoma, and Texas recently passed laws restricting credit-card marketing on public campuses, joining 15 other states that already had such restrictions in place. In California, credit-card marketers can’t lure students with free gifts; in Oklahoma, colleges can no longer sell student information for credit-card marketing purposes; and in Texas, on-campus credit-card marketing was curtailed, permitting marketing only on limited days and in certain locations.

However, beyond the recent legislation, another type of state-sanctioned credit-card marketing escapes serious scrutiny: affinity card contracts and marketing. Virtually every major university boasts a multimillion-dollar affinity relationship with a credit-card company. Under these deals, the university can receive $10 million or more in exchange for offering credit-card companies exclusive access to students, alumni, and professors at school athletic events. In some cases, the deals require schools to provide student e-mail addresses and phone numbers to the card-issuing bank. As state funding shrinks for public universities, such deals grow.