Laura Whitcombe

Students are turning to sugar daddies and fetish sites to make ends meet

‘I’ve slept with people for money and I’ve been on dates with disgusting guys and put myself at risk just so I could have dinner and some leftovers for the next day.’

These are the harrowing words of a female first-year student describing the extraordinary lengths she went to in order to pay her way at university.

She found herself turning to ‘sugaring’ websites, which mostly introduce older wealthy men willing to lavish expensive gifts and cash to young women in return for company and often – but not always – sex. And as well as partnering ‘sugar daddies’ with bright, young things, the websites also connect ‘sugar mummies’ to them too.

The hard-up 19-year-old mentioned above is far from alone in turning to extreme means to get by at uni. Facing average monthly costs of £790, while the average monthly maintenance loan equates to just £540, students are having to cope with a monthly shortfall of £250. And eight out of 10 students admit finding it difficult to plug the gap.

These are the findings of the Save the Student website’s annual survey, which also discovered six per cent of the more than 2,000 students it spoke to had sold their bodies to help make ends meet – either by engaging in sexual activity or by taking part in medical trials.

The 19-year-old philosophy student said she first heard about ‘sugar dating’ on a blogging site. ‘The idea of getting easy money with something I already have [the ability to have sex, and the ability to entertain someone] made me interested.

‘I don’t come from a rich family so I was interested in getting money quickly and easily.’

Through the sites she appeared on, she made arrangements with sugar daddies to spend time with them in exchange for monthly allowances of around £1,000 – and sometimes she’d come away from her liaisons with gifts too.

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