Are Impending College Loans Causing Our Children To Search For ‘Sugar Daddies’?

The recession hasn’t fully recovered and the average college student is accruing more and more debt. With few jobs available for their parents, let alone themselves, young adults are looking out onto the horizon of adulthood with some very high bills to pay and with very little resources. The rising cost of education and little means to pay for it is causing some collegiate-bound girls and boys to go in search of “sugar daddies” — older wealthy men who are willing to pay tuition bills in exchange for their companionship and sex.

The Huffington Post reports on SeekingArrangement.com, an explicitly sugar daddy/sugar baby website intended to match financially-strapped young people with wealthy men. The website is very clear that “college students” are definitely part of the intended “sugar baby” cohort. The founder of the website, Brandon Wade, told HuffPo that college students make up about one-third of active sugar babies — and the demographic is growing all the time. He also insists that SeekingArrangement.com is a “for mutually beneficial relatonships” to quote from the tagline of his website.

One sugar daddy, a 70-year old, says that while he is seeking out the company of a smart, college-educated young lady, he thinks of himself as a “humanitarian,” helping young girls in need:

“Most of these young women have debt from school,” says Jack, who finds most young women also carry an average of $8,000 in credit-card debt. “I guess I like the college girls more because I think of their student debt as good debt. At least it seems like I’m helping them out, like I’m helping them to get a better life.”

HuffPo cites some very impressive universities in determining students from which institutions are using Seekingarrangement.com:

New York University tops the list with 498 sugar babies, while UCLA comes in at No. 8 with 253, and Harvard University ranks at No. 9 with 231. The University of California at Berkeley ranks at No. 13 with 193, the University of Southern California ranks at No. 15 with 183, and Tulane University ranks at No. 20 with 163 college sugar babies.

Technically, these young women and men are adults and can do with their bodies what they wish. But with our top universities coming up on these profiles, parents can rightfully raise a few eyebrows as to what exactly a college education should cost their children. And although these harsh economic times mean that everyone is working hard at jobs they might otherwise not consider, I doubt for many parents prostitution is what they had in mind for their college-bound kids.

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