While many students rely on student loans, parents or part-time work to assist with the expenses of post-secondary, some students are choosing an alternative and creative route to pay the bills. The internet has made it incredibly easy to connect individuals, including wealthy men and students looking to pay tuition, also known as “Sugar Daddies” and “Sugar Babies”.
     Photo provided by seekingarrangements.com
In the last decade tuition has risen by 40 percent. During the 2016-2017 school year, the average undergraduate student paid $6,373 in tuition fees at Canadian universities (Global News), this does not include other expenses such as living accommodations and groceries. For many students, university is the first time they will be supporting themselves financially.
So what exactly are Sugar Daddies and Sugar Babies? A Sugar Baby is typically a young female, in this case a university student, looking for an easy way to maintain financial stability. On the other hand, a Sugar Daddy is an older, wealthy male who will pay the young female in money and gifts to hold some sort of relationship with him. This can be anything from simple phone calls to a sexual or emotional relationship. Similarly, a Sugar Mama is an older female who seeks out a younger male, known as a Sugar Boy. However, when it comes to university students making these arrangements, the Sugar Daddy/Sugar Baby situation is most common.
What attracts a student to making these types of arrangements is how effective and efficient it is. Students are able to make thousands of dollars a month from this arrangement alone, have no set hours, and are able to negotiate the terms of the relationship. Students can easily sign up with a Sugar Baby website, state their needs and location, and the website will generate a list of Sugar Daddies in the area who can meet their needs.
One of the most common websites used to set up these relationships is called Seeking Arrangements. According to their website, more than one million students signed up for their services in 2016. Western University ranked 13th for the number of Sugar Babies signed up in 2016, with 79 students. The top three highest ranking Canadian universities are the University of Alberta, with 138 new memberships, Ryerson University, with 135, and the University of Ottawa, with 132. The site itself has made university students its target audience, giving students a free premium membership if they sign up with their school email.
In an article published by The Toronto Star, two female university students, Rebecca and Mila were interviewed about their arrangements with Sugar Daddies. Both students were struggling financially and joined the website to maintain financial stability while not having to work an excess amount of hours at a part-time job. Neither Rebecca nor Mila have any regrets about joining the website and engaging in relationships. However, that is not always the case.
In an interview conducted by Vice, one student faced problems after her Sugar Daddy became controlling and too much to handle. However, she claims that not all Sugar Daddies are like that. She also dealt with a moral conflict as she did not see a difference from what she was doing to prostitution. Alexis Germany, the spokeswoman for Seeking Arrangements, states that prostitution is against the sites policy. Online-only relationships are also against policy (Toronto Star).
Tuition fees will continue to rise in the future, forcing students to come up with efficient ways to make money to support themselves through their university careers. While there can be shame behind a Sugar Baby/Sugar Daddy relationship, more students are opting for this option as an easy way of staying out of debt.
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