Barbara Anthony, the under secretary of the Massachusetts Office of Consumer Affairs and Business Regulation, and David Floreen, the senior vice president of the Massachusetts Banking Association, gave a presentation on how students can take a number of measures to improve their credit awareness and literacy. The presentation was part of the Project Credit Smarts series, a program sponsored by the Commonwealth.

The goal of the program, Anthony said at the onset of the presentation, is to “reach out to young people across the state to talk about credit and financial services.”

“College students are a big market for the credit card industry because they’re new customers,” Anthony added during the presentation, which took place during Professor Norman Aitken’s Introductory to Microeconomics class.

One of the primary messages that Anthony and Floreen underscored were that students should try to pay off credit card payments in full.

“Pay off your purchases in full,” Anthony told the group of students, adding that “bad credit history can affect you in a number of ways.”

According to Anthony, the roughly 500,000 college students in Massachusetts have about $1 billion worth of credit card debt.

Other topics of the presentation included ways that students can access free credit reports and how newly implemented credit card regulations affect those in college.

Anthony said that under state and federal law, all citizens are entitled to a free credit report. However, people should pursue websites such as annualcreditreport.com for the reports, and not websites like freecreditreport.com, because the latter requires a membership fee to join, she added.

She also said that the Credit Card Responsibility and Disclosure Act of 2009 places further restrictions on credit card companies. The act prevents companies from giving away free products on college campuses and makes them give a notice of 45 days before raising interest rates, among other things.

“There’s a number of good things here to protect consumers,” Anthony said of the act.

One of the primary messages that Anthony and Floreen highlighted, though, was that students should pay attention to their credit card statements and take the proper measures if they see something that isn’t right in them.

“If you run into a problem,” Floreen said, “call the company earlier; don’t wait.”

William Perkins can be reached at [email protected].