[jodi]

Definitely the borrowers...but to add to that, I think parents need to be more responsible in teaching kids about money EARLY. Of course, that's hard to do if you are drowning in debt yourself. My parents taught us very early the value of earning and saving money, and my brothers and I are very financially responsible. DH's family is just the opposite - running up cc debt, paying high rates of interest due to bad credit scores, etc. The kids learned bad habits from their parents, but thankfully, DH has seen the light and is just as much a saver as me now. But it did take him a while to clean up his credit score.
You can't just let a kid go off to college without teaching him about credit cards - the cc companies prey on college kids. So I think parents need to be responsible too. Of course, the ultimate responsibility lies with the individual still.