Editorial

Tuesday, 03 November 2009 11:50

Debt is an escalating problem amongst students who are forced to take out loans to cover the cost of their further education and living away from home expenses when parents cannot afford to cover them.

In a vain attempt to cope with this rising debt, many students are turning to online gambling for an answer. Unfortunately, that answer is not always one they expect to receive and many are falling even deeper into debt as a result. So how are students using online gambling to cope with their debts? Let's look at this growing problem and see where the answers, if they exist can be found.

The majority of students that are turning to online gambling to try to deal with their debts and turn them around are resorting to poker as the most promising answer. This is mainly because it is a game that does not rely solely on the element of chance such as slots or roulette and a skilful poker player can actually make a great deal of money by playing online. However, the main problem facing many of these students is that they have not developed the necessary high level of skill needed to pull it off.

What happens is that students get to know about certain maths students who have the mental ability to calculate the winning odds on any game. They have also developed an in-depth knowledge of the various forms of poker to a degree where they can win regularly enough to make money from their game.

With the belief that if the maths students can do it, then so can they, many less well skilled students turn to the online poker tables to try and emulate their colleagues. More often than not, because of their lack of skill and ability to read the odds, those attempts are futile and it lands the students even deeper in debt.

What happens is that students are away from home, probably for the very first time in their lives and spend a lot of time alone in their room with just a laptop for company. It doesn't take much to be tempted to go on to gambling websites, especially when they know their peers are already doing it and some of them are successful. A combination of their lack of skill and experience with the game, little experience with handling money or understanding risk assessment coupled with a desire to be like their peers with the belief they can emulate their success is a recipe for their own disaster.

So what is being done to help students who get caught up in the online gambling spiral and end up gambling away their student loans?

There are support groups organised that can offer advice to students in financial difficulties nationwide, as well as university specific groups who can be approached to give support and advice. However, when a student gets themselves into deep debt through gambling, there is not much anyone can do to help them pay off those debts apart from debt counselling and debt management companies. The last resort of course in extreme situations is bankruptcy, which is a serious position to be in at such a young age. This last resort can also cause future financial problems when trying to obtain credit or home loans, making it not one to be undertaken lightly.

What is the answer to preventing these problems from happening in the first place?

The answers are not so easy to come by, as each individual case is different. Some inroads can be made by educating new students by warning them of the dangers associated with gambling online and in particular with games such as poker where they may believe they can win, when often the opposite is true. However, even these measures may not be enough, as students are old enough to come to their own decisions but still young enough to make mistakes in the belief that they already know the answers. When that happens, any attempts at intervention can be met with resistance and in some cases out and out defiance.

Ultimately, the individual will do what they decide to do regardless of advice, rules or admonishment. One approach is to simply educate by example and hook students up with others who have experienced the very problems that they are facing in the hope that they will listen to their peers and to their logic and reason where they may simply ignore the attempts by authority figures to try to help them.

A 2007 prevalence survey undertaken by the Gambling Commission found that 68% of the population of the UK had gambled at some time within the previous year. It also found problem gambling to be estimated at 0.5 - 0.6% amongst UK adults, although rates were found to be higher in places like the USA, Hong Kong and South Africa.