Millions of college students are so terrified of loans they’re turning to ‘Sugar Daddies’ for help paying for school

Millions of college students are so terrified of loans they’re turning to ‘Sugar Daddies’ for help paying for school

• A growing number of students are turning to dating sites to find Sugar Daddies and Mommas for help with college costs.
• Christina, a 29-year-old Sugar Baby and MBA student living in Las Vegas, talked to Business Insider about her experience.
• She’s received over $90,000 for education-related costs, but says the stigma is the hardest part about being a Sugar Baby.

The student debt crisis in the US has gotten so bad, there’s a growing group of young women – and some men – who are taking an unconventional approach to paying for college.

Through dating websites like SeekingArrangement.com , Sugar Babies, as they’re called, partner up with wealthy, often older, men who want to spend money on them.
Some 2.5 million Sugar Babies identified as students in 2016 on SeekingArrangement.com. Many of these Sugar Babies turned to the site to find someone who will pay for their education so they can graduate debt, and worry, free.

In exchange, Sugar Babies go to dinners, attend events, or accompany their Sugar Daddy, or daddies, on trips. In some cases, they provide companionship or foster a mentor-mentee relationship. In other situations, the terms of the agreement include physical intimacy.

Welcome to Sugar Baby University
SeekingArrangement.com was founded by MIT graduate Brandon Wade in 2006 and now counts 10 million members worldwide, making it the biggest Sugar Baby and Sugar Daddy dating site on the web.

A couple years ago, the site noticed an uptick in the number of members signing up with a university email address, Alexis Germany, a spokesperson for SeekingArrangement.com, told Business Insider. It decided to launch a marketing campaign – dubbed Sugar Baby University – targeting indebted college students and young people who are interested in college but afraid of taking on massive loans.