With US university tuition on its never-ending rise, some students are taking a rather different approach to funding their education … but everyone assures us that it isn’t actually prostitution:
The average student-loan debt is approaching $30,000. That is to say, of the 70 percent of college students who borrow to pay all or some of their college expenses, the average student left college about $28,400 in the hole in 2013, according to USNews.
This alarming number has triggered a spate of news stories about female college students who are so panicked, so morally freewheeling, or both, that they are seeking the services of “sugar daddies”: older, well-fixed men who yearn to sponsor the academic careers of young college-age women in return for the sheer pleasure of spending time in the company of one of those youthful but impecunious “sugar babies.” (No, it’s not prostitution, everyone involved insists!)
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Nonetheless, would-be Holly Golightlys ought to be wary of claims that the sugar-baby lifestyle will make pursuing that B.A. in art history entirely cost-free. For one thing, the entity that seems to the biggest promoter of the sugaring-one’s-way-through-college phenomenon is none other than SeekingArrangement itself, apparently the world’s largest sugar broker, with a claimed 3.6 million members. A promotional video uploaded onto YouTube by Seeking Arrangements in January 2015 touts “Sugar Baby University” with images of gorgeous young ladies who seem to be majoring in mascara, one of whom is being handed a sheaf of C-notes as she sits at her laptop. “Take out loans and eat ramen,” says the voice-over, “or get a sugar daddy and live the life you’ve always wanted. Sugar Baby U. is the place “where beautiful, ambitious people graduate debt-free,” the voice continues.
SeekingArrangement’s motives in seeking maximum numbers of enrollees in Sugar Baby U. who are also enrollees at real universities are blindingly clear: College-age women — almost always in their early twenties — are the most desirable age group for men seeking less-than-serious liaisons. (Google “coed porn,” and you’ll see what I mean.)
But the competition for those well-heeled older men willing to foot the bill for a lovely young thing to “live the lifestyle” she’s “always wanted” turns out to be quite stiff. SeekingArrangement’s home page advertises that there are “8 sugar babies per sugar daddy” — not a hopeful-sounding ratio.
