Hundreds of female students in Tayside and Fife have joined a website which pairs them with “sugar daddies” older men who pay them for dates.
The SeekingArrangement website claims that two million students worldwide have signed up to the site to find an older partner to help them get through university without racking up large debts.
The site predominantly caters for men and young women, but also matches up male students with older women.
One student leader in Dundee described the growing popularity of the website, and others like it, as “a worrying development”.
A SeekingArrangement survey in 2012 found that 80% of relationships it helped manufacture involved sex. It says the so-called “sugar babies” and “sugar daddies” enter into a “mutually beneficial arrangement” where the men get to date younger women who, in turn, receive financial assistance to help them through university.
The website also claims the average university or college “sugar baby” receives around £5,000 a month in financial assistance, although this figure is not specific to the UK.
This week the website released a list of the 20 British institutions which recorded the highest number of new members over the past year.
According to the website, St Andrews University had 147 new members last year, the ninth highest number in the country.
Glasgow Caledonian had 154 new members, the most in Scotland and the fifth highest in the UK.
Cambridge University had the highest number of new members with 168.
In total the website claims there are 155,000 sugar babies in the UK and 14,000 sugar daddies.
Although it is similar to ordinary dating websites, each “sugar baby” posts on their profile how much money they would expect to receive from potential matches each month.
A spokeswoman for the website said it also had members at both Dundee and Abertay universities but was unable to provide exact figures.
The Courier’s Sex and Society investigation continues today. For more, see Thursday’s Courier or try our new digital edition.