In recent years, student debt has sky-rocketed as credit card companies have relentlessly targeted college campuses. Yesterday, Businessweek noted the beginning of an innovative national effort to counteract the credit card industry’s heavy-handed on-campus tactics by mimicking them. This article reports on how savvy activists organized by the U.S. Public Interest Research Group are turning the tables on the credit card industry by employing the industry’s very own aggressive on-campus marketing tactics to educate students about credit traps and unfair practices.

On October 10th, student volunteers set up counter-marketing tables on 34 college campuses, calling themselves “Feesa” (not Visa), explaining the dangers of run-away credit-card fees and deconstructing the misleading language used by credit card companies. Instead of the more expensive freebies favored by the industry, the volunteers passed out lollipops that read “Don’t be a sucker.”

The Ford-Foundation-financed campaign will hit over 40 campuses in the next 18 months. Will U.S. PIRG be able to achieve its goals of making students more informed consumers and pressuring the credit card industry to reform its on-campus tactics? I hope so. The success of this kind of guerilla-education effort would point to the probable effectiveness of prioritizing financial literacy in the actual curricula of our educational institutions. Should students be leaving high school without knowing the difference between good and bad loans? Or without knowing what a yield spread premium is? Or without knowing how to figure out how much debt they can afford to take on? Hopefully, this Ford Foundation pilot marks a realization among mainstream foundations and activists that helping American consumers become financially literate is critical to our national health.