By Chris Brook

In an effort to help students learn about the perks and perils of credit cards, a marketing and research class has teamed up with two professional businesses to dissect how credit cards work and enlighten students who may not feel confident about credit.

“We get credit cards pushed in our faces here on campus,” said senior marketing major and group leader Jason Cannie.

One of those credit card companies, the global investment banking group Citibank, is assisting in the project by budgeting the groups $2,500 and hosting a Web site the student groups designed (www.students.usecreditwisely.com). Citibank, along with the industry/education partnership building company Edventure Partners, was brought in to work “hands on” with Professor Felicia Lassk’s class, Cannie said.

“I think it’s great that students have direct contact with companies,” said David Mease, a program facilitator for Edventure Partners. “They meet with executives and the clients approve everything. This takes it a step further and makes it a case of competition.”

Lassk’s two classes, containing about 60 students overall, converged and sectioned themselves off into four groups: advertising, public relations, finance and research. In these groups, they’ve collectively set weekly objectives, fulfilled them and come up with an array of statistics and information.

One of the groups used a poll to define the information that would go into the Web site. A poll of 300 Northeastern students showed that when it comes to credit cards, students want to learn more about interest rates, late fees and penalties.

The final project, the launching of the Web site, focused on the concerns students expressed, Cannie said.

“[The site] has all the tools students need to get educated about credit cards,” he said. “The goal of our campaign is to push people toward the Web site and give them some kind of information so they’re not out there using credit in a bad way.”

Although the site is hosted by Citibank, they aren’t encouraging credit card use, Cannie said.

“They don’t want to press anything on the public, they’re not out to get you one of their credit cards,” he said. “It’s an independent site, no credit card company is affiliated with it at all. It’s like an educational tool.”

On Nov. 17, the groups will see the culmination of more than two months of work. A presentation on the Krentzman Quad during activities period will have the group set up tents and laptops hoping to get the word out about their Web site.

“We’re going to have the Web site up on these different laptops and we’re going to show them the specific sections that they have questions about,” Cannie said.

Following the event at Krentzman, the group will do a post campaign analysis and decide whether or not they’ve successfully educated students about credit education tools. If Citibank takes a liking to the group’s campaign, they could very possibly use it in the future, since they’ve done so with classes in the past.

While the groups get professional experience from the project, Cannie said he hopes students get something out of it as well.

“I’m just hoping that students will learn credit information they will need in the future and that they have a place to go [for information],” he said.