TCF Bank Stadium built with U of M students' overdraft fees

But for students like Schober, the alliance between TCF and the university feels just a little too corporate. From the West Bank to Dinkytown, the TCF name is married to the Gopher M. The stadium is just the worst offender.

"Seeing TCF's name on that was another thing that everyone was getting sick of seeing," Schober says. "Every single thing on campus seems to be sponsored by TCF."

courtesy of University of Minnesota Athletics

The house that overdraft fees built

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• Minnesota Golden Gophers (Football)
• Morgan Adamson
• Jon Schober
• Big Ten Conference (Football)
• College Football

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In the wake of the financial meltdown, banks are coming under increased scrutiny. Sen. Christopher Dodd (D-Connecticut) chairs the Senate Banking Committee and has introduced a bill that would demand banks disclose their overdraft policies to new customers in clear language.

Perhaps seeing the writing on the wall, TCF announced last week that it would do away with overdraft fees. The raft of changes is scheduled to take effect in the first quarter of 2010, and when they've been put in place, TCF's checking and debit policies will be nearly unrecognizable. Totally Free Checking, which has been the bank's flagship service, will be gone, replaced by Convenience Checking. Under the new rules, an overdrawn account will be penalized by a daily fee rather than repeated fees for every new expenditure.

"It's a completely different product," says TCF spokesman Jason Korstange. "It seemed to us that a lot of things needed to be changed. We felt we had to answer our customers' questions."

It's a step in the right direction for a bank that exhibited an unhealthy appetite for the overdraft dollar. It'll take a bite out of TCF's bottom line, which the bank hopes to absorb by implementing account maintenance fees on the front end.

Ultimately, the partnership between TCF and the University of Minnesota still rankles, as does the lack of training for students who are first-time accountholders.

"The U says they partner with TCF to provide financial literacy so [students] better understand how to manage their finances," says Josh Winters, CEO of the on-campus advocacy group MPIRG. "With a relationship like this, they should have some responsibility to provide financial literacy, but it simply doesn't occur."