That's how the system works all over the world:
1. Make the people believe that the more you are educated, the better your job will be & the more you will earn (merit-based society). Only after incurring a large amount of education debt & graduation, that the former student (now grad) realizes it's all about networking (which is not as easy as deluded career officers or HR people may make you believe). So, all that merit-based idea goes right out the window.
2. Anyway, so people (parents & kids, alike) are thinking high-level education is very important for securing a better future.
3. Now, if you go to a crappy university, it will cost you a lot less, but then, your degree might be worthless, too. After all, Ivy league universities are not stupid to ask for 6-figure tuition fees for an MBA. Bachelor's degrees are not cheap, either. On top of that, an Arts degree might be cheaper than a Business degree or even an Engineering one.
Universities have now become "brands", which we used to hear in consumer products. The more a brand is famous, the higher it's price in the market. So, the more a university is famous, the higher it's tuition cost.
4. So, to make your future bright, you studied hard in secondary school & went through all those entry tests, which are mindless & meaningless & don't actually help anyone in gauging your intelligence. Heck, per my experience, rich & influential people still get their kids enrolled in "brand-name" universities without all those pesky tests.
5. Now, you went through all those entry tests, & your academics, & even amassed some extracurricular activities under your belt. You applied to universities & you got offers. But, hey, education is not free. If you are not one of the few lucky ones who were born with a silver spoon & didn't find a life partner who is either, then you have 2 options:
a. Go full time & incur a large amount of student debt. Your hope is that you will find a job after graduation, which will help you, pay off this large mountain of debt (on average, a 4 year degree is costing about 50,000 ... in any currency).
b. Go part time & work at a minimum wage job (or maybe, 2 jobs). Knowing the minimum wages of servers, baristas, cashiers, stockboys etc. (about $10/hour), it won't be enough to pay off all your tuition costs for a semester.
So, your parents are poor & cannot help you financially in your education. Part time jobs are not only cutting in your study time, but the wages from those jobs are also insufficient to cover your tuition. Full time study means you are definitely going to graduate with a mountain of debt & the current economic outlook for graduates snagging a cushy job with a nice income is slim to none.
So you are left with only one option: get into a business which pays very lucratively, much less time consuming (than working multiple part time jobs), certainly much more enjoyable, & you still get your education without debt (so you can use that income which you will earn after graduation towards living your life, instead of paying off your 6-figure loan). Seems like Sex Work is the best alternative which matches all these criteria.
Now, if you are a parent, you are thinking this is not going to happen to my kid, or if you are secondary school student, you might be rejoicing or worrying about this.
For parents: worry about it a lot. Why? Education costs are only increasing. No university anywhere in the world (except a few Northern European countries & Germany) has decreased its tuition fees. It's a huge & very lucrative business for the government & private sector (esp., the financial sector, because those loans help banks after all). Education has become a private business, be it a private elementary school in South Asia or private secondary schools in North America or private universities in developed countries.
Sure, there are public institutions for education, too, but have you seen the quality of education being provided there, recently? It's abysmal. Public schools in developing countries are in abysmal conditions. Public schools in developed countries are constantly seeing their budget cut (case in point: secondary school teachers in a few Ontario areas are on strike & hence, schools are closed, & elementary school teachers are only providing minimal teaching service, as part of their strike action). Public universities do provide a good level of education but when compare their quality with the private ones, you see a stark difference.
Plus, public universities, due to their budgets cut constantly, are also increasing their tuition costs constantly, so students pick up the tab. I had a discussion couple years ago with a student of my alma mater, Brock University. He was in the same program as I was, 10 years back, & he was at the same year, as I was, 10 years back. So, me & him, were almost 10 years apart, in the same degree, in the same university. I asked him what was his tuition cost. He told me: $7000/year. Mine was $4000/year a decade ago. So, the tuition cost went up by almost 75% in 10 years; an average annual increase of about 7.5% in tuition cost. And this university is not even a "brand-name" university, like University of Toronto, or Queen's university.
Now, that much increase may not happen in every university, everywhere. But, the general consensus is that the tuition costs are skyrocketing. The next bubble to burst in US is being said to be student loan. Students have huge loans, & they are obligated to pay those off in US (or they will be jailed), & they are not getting jobs or, if they are getting jobs, their incomes have declined.
So, more and more students are getting into sex work, as the only way to graduate with no loans. Which in turn is creating a host of other problems;
a. image / self-esteem problems in both genders (after all, you gotta be exquisitely handsome / beautiful to work as a model or even being a sugar baby; we are not talking about street prostitutes here),
b. safety & security of those kids (some may get into a prostitution ring or even become a victim of human trafficking) ,
c. kids learning to get what they want by selling their bodies
d. high chances of emotional problems, drug abuse, alcohol abuse, & perhaps, relationship problems, later in life,
e. Glamorization of sex work (porn has glamorized sex work, even though, we see a very tiny portion of pornstars making it big; most are extensively abused)
So, essentially, we humans are digging our own graves. We are destroying our own societies. Yes, some countries have avoided this problem, e.g. Germany & Scandinavian countries, where post-secondary education is free, but I am talking about the majority here. We elect governments in supposedly democratic countries, which choose to spend billions overseas with results, which are usually negative (wars in Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya got us what ... not certainly more safety but billions of our hard-earned money got spent there with some very sketchy results).
If governments of developed countries would've chosen instead to spend that much money on education in North America & Europe, then imagine, by yourself, where would've been our education system in the past decade (that's how long these wars took)?
a. All education institutions, from elementary schools to universities would've gotten a mountain of money to spend on improving the quality of education, benefitting both educators & students alike.
b. Researchers would've gotten grants to research for technologies in environmental sustainability, energy, healthcare, & a host of other things, to avoid currently looming crises of climate change, water, food etc.
c. Those students, studying safely & securely, without any emotional or mental issues, would've gotten education without a mountain of debt.
d. When students would not be using their incomes from their new jobs towards servicing debt, & instead, would've spent on buying a new house, starting a new business, purchasing loads of products to fill that new house of theirs, travelling etc. That would've benefitted GDP of the country.
A healthy economy with our children having a bright future would've been the result.
But, hey, terrorists are coming to kill us all, so we may as well, wage wars, left, right, & center, by pimping out our own children. (sarcasm).
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Roughly one in 20 UK students has worked in the sex industry to earn money while at university, a new study has found. Many students are motivated by financial reasons, while others are driven by curiosity.
The study, which is part of the University of Swansea’s ‘Student Sex Work project,’ is the culmination of three years’ research involving 6,750 students.
In a climate of high tuition fees & rising living costs, over 50% of student sex workers in Britain are motivated by the need to earn money, the report said. Some 45% wish to avoid debt, it added.
The research found more men than women engage in sex work, while both sexes engage in ‘direct’ & ‘indirect’ activities. Direct sex work involves contact with clients & includes prostitution. Indirect work, however, includes modeling & phone sex.
For men, the most common sex occupations were ‘naked butler’ stripping, erotic dancing, performing in porn films & selling sexual services online. Women tended to engage in glamour modeling, erotic dancing, stripping, selling sex via phone lines & selling sex online.
The study found 4.8% of UK students have worked in the sex industry, while a fifth of students have considered turning to sex work.
A motivating factor for 56% of student sex workers was the need to pay for basic living expenses. Some 64% said they wished to fund a particular lifestyle. Avoiding or reducing debt were also major financial motivations uncovered by researchers.
Young people studying in the UK today can expect to leave university with about £50,000 of debt when maintenance loans are factored in. This figure could be larger when personal debt is included.
More than half of UK universities charge £9,000 per year for tuition fees, the maximum allowed by law.
According to the report, the findings “make it clear that for a significant number of student sex workers, sex work is embarked upon to assist with [university] fees and/or to avoid/reduce mounting student debt.”
“Thus, as long as students are expected to contribute high amounts of money to their education, & considering the rising cost of student living, it is unlikely that the number of students who turn to sex work will go down.”
Money was not the sole motivation however, with 54% of students citing curiosity as a reason for entering the sex industry. Some 59% said they thought they would enjoy the work, while 44% were motivated by sexual pleasure.
Although the majority of students reported feeling safe in their work, a quarter of respondents did not & half of those engaging in direct sex work said they feared violence while on the job.
Lead researcher, Dr. Tracey Sagar, called on universities to act on the findings.
“We now have firm evidence that students are engaged in the sex industry across the UK. The majority of these students keep their occupations secret & this is because of social stigma & fears of being judged by family & friends,” she said in a statement.
“We have to keep in mind that not all students engaged in the industry are safe or feel safe.
"It is vital now that Universities arm themselves with knowledge to better understand student sex work issues & that University services are able to support students where support is needed,” she added.
Sagar and co-researcher Debbie Jones were alarmed to discover that a fifth of students working in the sex industry sought counseling. That figure jumped to 51% for those engaged in direct sex work.
“We know through our research that some students are disclosing to University staff, but we also know that staff & support services can feel unconfident or unsure about their ability to offer the right support,” Jones said.
“This is why the next stage of the project is to develop & implement training packages for University staff & student support services,” she added.
Sagar argued it was important to include men in any initiatives. “Sex work is widely but wrongly perceived to be an occupation that is predominantly taken up by women,” she said.
“This means that males may fall through the student support net because they are not associated with sex work occupations.”
1. Make the people believe that the more you are educated, the better your job will be & the more you will earn (merit-based society). Only after incurring a large amount of education debt & graduation, that the former student (now grad) realizes it's all about networking (which is not as easy as deluded career officers or HR people may make you believe). So, all that merit-based idea goes right out the window.
2. Anyway, so people (parents & kids, alike) are thinking high-level education is very important for securing a better future.
3. Now, if you go to a crappy university, it will cost you a lot less, but then, your degree might be worthless, too. After all, Ivy league universities are not stupid to ask for 6-figure tuition fees for an MBA. Bachelor's degrees are not cheap, either. On top of that, an Arts degree might be cheaper than a Business degree or even an Engineering one.
Universities have now become "brands", which we used to hear in consumer products. The more a brand is famous, the higher it's price in the market. So, the more a university is famous, the higher it's tuition cost.
4. So, to make your future bright, you studied hard in secondary school & went through all those entry tests, which are mindless & meaningless & don't actually help anyone in gauging your intelligence. Heck, per my experience, rich & influential people still get their kids enrolled in "brand-name" universities without all those pesky tests.
5. Now, you went through all those entry tests, & your academics, & even amassed some extracurricular activities under your belt. You applied to universities & you got offers. But, hey, education is not free. If you are not one of the few lucky ones who were born with a silver spoon & didn't find a life partner who is either, then you have 2 options:
a. Go full time & incur a large amount of student debt. Your hope is that you will find a job after graduation, which will help you, pay off this large mountain of debt (on average, a 4 year degree is costing about 50,000 ... in any currency).
b. Go part time & work at a minimum wage job (or maybe, 2 jobs). Knowing the minimum wages of servers, baristas, cashiers, stockboys etc. (about $10/hour), it won't be enough to pay off all your tuition costs for a semester.
So, your parents are poor & cannot help you financially in your education. Part time jobs are not only cutting in your study time, but the wages from those jobs are also insufficient to cover your tuition. Full time study means you are definitely going to graduate with a mountain of debt & the current economic outlook for graduates snagging a cushy job with a nice income is slim to none.
So you are left with only one option: get into a business which pays very lucratively, much less time consuming (than working multiple part time jobs), certainly much more enjoyable, & you still get your education without debt (so you can use that income which you will earn after graduation towards living your life, instead of paying off your 6-figure loan). Seems like Sex Work is the best alternative which matches all these criteria.
Now, if you are a parent, you are thinking this is not going to happen to my kid, or if you are secondary school student, you might be rejoicing or worrying about this.
For parents: worry about it a lot. Why? Education costs are only increasing. No university anywhere in the world (except a few Northern European countries & Germany) has decreased its tuition fees. It's a huge & very lucrative business for the government & private sector (esp., the financial sector, because those loans help banks after all). Education has become a private business, be it a private elementary school in South Asia or private secondary schools in North America or private universities in developed countries.
Sure, there are public institutions for education, too, but have you seen the quality of education being provided there, recently? It's abysmal. Public schools in developing countries are in abysmal conditions. Public schools in developed countries are constantly seeing their budget cut (case in point: secondary school teachers in a few Ontario areas are on strike & hence, schools are closed, & elementary school teachers are only providing minimal teaching service, as part of their strike action). Public universities do provide a good level of education but when compare their quality with the private ones, you see a stark difference.
Plus, public universities, due to their budgets cut constantly, are also increasing their tuition costs constantly, so students pick up the tab. I had a discussion couple years ago with a student of my alma mater, Brock University. He was in the same program as I was, 10 years back, & he was at the same year, as I was, 10 years back. So, me & him, were almost 10 years apart, in the same degree, in the same university. I asked him what was his tuition cost. He told me: $7000/year. Mine was $4000/year a decade ago. So, the tuition cost went up by almost 75% in 10 years; an average annual increase of about 7.5% in tuition cost. And this university is not even a "brand-name" university, like University of Toronto, or Queen's university.
Now, that much increase may not happen in every university, everywhere. But, the general consensus is that the tuition costs are skyrocketing. The next bubble to burst in US is being said to be student loan. Students have huge loans, & they are obligated to pay those off in US (or they will be jailed), & they are not getting jobs or, if they are getting jobs, their incomes have declined.
So, more and more students are getting into sex work, as the only way to graduate with no loans. Which in turn is creating a host of other problems;
a. image / self-esteem problems in both genders (after all, you gotta be exquisitely handsome / beautiful to work as a model or even being a sugar baby; we are not talking about street prostitutes here),
b. safety & security of those kids (some may get into a prostitution ring or even become a victim of human trafficking) ,
c. kids learning to get what they want by selling their bodies
d. high chances of emotional problems, drug abuse, alcohol abuse, & perhaps, relationship problems, later in life,
e. Glamorization of sex work (porn has glamorized sex work, even though, we see a very tiny portion of pornstars making it big; most are extensively abused)
So, essentially, we humans are digging our own graves. We are destroying our own societies. Yes, some countries have avoided this problem, e.g. Germany & Scandinavian countries, where post-secondary education is free, but I am talking about the majority here. We elect governments in supposedly democratic countries, which choose to spend billions overseas with results, which are usually negative (wars in Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya got us what ... not certainly more safety but billions of our hard-earned money got spent there with some very sketchy results).
If governments of developed countries would've chosen instead to spend that much money on education in North America & Europe, then imagine, by yourself, where would've been our education system in the past decade (that's how long these wars took)?
a. All education institutions, from elementary schools to universities would've gotten a mountain of money to spend on improving the quality of education, benefitting both educators & students alike.
b. Researchers would've gotten grants to research for technologies in environmental sustainability, energy, healthcare, & a host of other things, to avoid currently looming crises of climate change, water, food etc.
c. Those students, studying safely & securely, without any emotional or mental issues, would've gotten education without a mountain of debt.
d. When students would not be using their incomes from their new jobs towards servicing debt, & instead, would've spent on buying a new house, starting a new business, purchasing loads of products to fill that new house of theirs, travelling etc. That would've benefitted GDP of the country.
A healthy economy with our children having a bright future would've been the result.
But, hey, terrorists are coming to kill us all, so we may as well, wage wars, left, right, & center, by pimping out our own children. (sarcasm).
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Roughly one in 20 UK students has worked in the sex industry to earn money while at university, a new study has found. Many students are motivated by financial reasons, while others are driven by curiosity.
The study, which is part of the University of Swansea’s ‘Student Sex Work project,’ is the culmination of three years’ research involving 6,750 students.
In a climate of high tuition fees & rising living costs, over 50% of student sex workers in Britain are motivated by the need to earn money, the report said. Some 45% wish to avoid debt, it added.
The research found more men than women engage in sex work, while both sexes engage in ‘direct’ & ‘indirect’ activities. Direct sex work involves contact with clients & includes prostitution. Indirect work, however, includes modeling & phone sex.
For men, the most common sex occupations were ‘naked butler’ stripping, erotic dancing, performing in porn films & selling sexual services online. Women tended to engage in glamour modeling, erotic dancing, stripping, selling sex via phone lines & selling sex online.
The study found 4.8% of UK students have worked in the sex industry, while a fifth of students have considered turning to sex work.
A motivating factor for 56% of student sex workers was the need to pay for basic living expenses. Some 64% said they wished to fund a particular lifestyle. Avoiding or reducing debt were also major financial motivations uncovered by researchers.
Young people studying in the UK today can expect to leave university with about £50,000 of debt when maintenance loans are factored in. This figure could be larger when personal debt is included.
More than half of UK universities charge £9,000 per year for tuition fees, the maximum allowed by law.
According to the report, the findings “make it clear that for a significant number of student sex workers, sex work is embarked upon to assist with [university] fees and/or to avoid/reduce mounting student debt.”
“Thus, as long as students are expected to contribute high amounts of money to their education, & considering the rising cost of student living, it is unlikely that the number of students who turn to sex work will go down.”
Money was not the sole motivation however, with 54% of students citing curiosity as a reason for entering the sex industry. Some 59% said they thought they would enjoy the work, while 44% were motivated by sexual pleasure.
Although the majority of students reported feeling safe in their work, a quarter of respondents did not & half of those engaging in direct sex work said they feared violence while on the job.
Lead researcher, Dr. Tracey Sagar, called on universities to act on the findings.
“We now have firm evidence that students are engaged in the sex industry across the UK. The majority of these students keep their occupations secret & this is because of social stigma & fears of being judged by family & friends,” she said in a statement.
“We have to keep in mind that not all students engaged in the industry are safe or feel safe.
"It is vital now that Universities arm themselves with knowledge to better understand student sex work issues & that University services are able to support students where support is needed,” she added.
Sagar and co-researcher Debbie Jones were alarmed to discover that a fifth of students working in the sex industry sought counseling. That figure jumped to 51% for those engaged in direct sex work.
“We know through our research that some students are disclosing to University staff, but we also know that staff & support services can feel unconfident or unsure about their ability to offer the right support,” Jones said.
“This is why the next stage of the project is to develop & implement training packages for University staff & student support services,” she added.
Sagar argued it was important to include men in any initiatives. “Sex work is widely but wrongly perceived to be an occupation that is predominantly taken up by women,” she said.
“This means that males may fall through the student support net because they are not associated with sex work occupations.”
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