Lack of skills or lack of accountability?

[ohcnetwork]

WASHINGTON - Nearing a diploma, most college students cannot handle many complex but common tasks, from understanding credit card offers to comparing the cost per ounce of food.
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Those are the sobering findings of a study of literacy on college campuses, the first to target the skills of students as they approach the start of their careers.

More than 50 percent of students at four-year schools and more than 75 percent at two-year colleges lacked the skills to perform complex literacy tasks.

Source
I mentioned this in my finance forum number of times, but average American consumer has 9k+ credit debt.  Given that, I have to wonder if average American simply lacks accountability.  Is that what's happening here or college students simply do not have skills?

[adi]

I think young people across the globe have minimal knowledge of finance issues, hence basic skills like budgeting correctly and finding the best deals for your finance are often skills that the majority do not have.

[ohcnetwork]

Something like choosing right credit cards can be tricky, but taking student loan to pay tuition, taking additional loan to have fun and spending more money using student credit card to have more fun while they don't make much money (or none) is something different.  They were not brought up properly, education system is not doing what it's supposed to be doing, or what's going on here?

[adi]

There was a report out recently blaming credit card companies in Britain for not vetting applications carefully enough and lending money to those not in a position to repay the debt.  I can't help but think however that this isn't really their problem.  If people are borrowing money then it is surely their responsibility to investigate the terms and conditions?