Dive Brief:

• Penn State University earned more than any other college by partnering with a bank to offer credit cards to alumni and students.
• The school's contract with Bank of America gives the school a 1% royalty on every alumni purchase and a .5% royalty on every student purchase, adding up to more than $2.7 million in 2011.
• Such school-bank partnerships are declining, from about $84 million in overall payouts in 2009 to about $50 million in 2012. 

Dive Insight:

The alumni angle of this isn't as troubling as the student angle. Alumni are adults who can presumably make their own informed decisions. Students, on the other hand, may have less experience with credit cards and debt, and saddling them with high-interest credit cards seems less than wise. Federal legislation in 2009 cut down on a lot of the practices that originally made these partnerships so lucrative. Now, for example, students must be 21 or over to sign up for a card, or have a co-signer.