Congress is poised to strictly limit a form of debt that is aggressively marketed to college students, often with the assistance of institutions they attend, and that contains confusing terms and conditions and dangerously high interest rates.

This debt doesn't come with a promissory note, it's plastic.

At the end of April, the U.S. House of Representatives easily passed a bill known as the Credit Cardholders' Bill of Rights. If enacted, that measure would limit some of the most egregious credit card company practices, including marketing their products to underage students. The Senate is considering its own version of the legislation this week, and in many ways it is harder on the credit card companies than the House bill.

While we applaud these measures, we would like to see Congress go further and provide more sunshine on the lucrative arrangements some colleges and universities have forged with credit card companies that have enabled them to profit off of their students' indebtedness.

The House and Senate bills primarily focus on restricting some of the most notorious credit card billing practices, such as double billing, a way of calculating finance charges that hurts borrowers with fluctuating balances. Both bills would also take noteworthy steps to tackle the growing credit card debt burden being taken on by students.

Just how bad a problem is it? A report recently released by Sallie Mae found that 84 percent of students sampled had at least one credit card and that their average balance was $3,173. Sallie Mae's numbers are slightly higher than, but consistent with, figures published in a study last year by the U.S. Public Interest Research Group Education Fund, which found that 64 percent of its students surveyed had at least one credit card, with average balances ranging from $1,301 for freshmen to $2,623 for seniors.[1]