January 21, 2008

French Students Increasingly Become Prostitutes to Pay Tuition, 2 Books Suggest

Two books published in France last week have focused attention on the phenomenon of young women moonlighting as sex workers to finance their university education, The Guardian, a British newspaper, reported today.

One book is a memoir of a 19-year-old modern-languages major named Laura who writes that, in her first year at an unnamed university, she was obliged to resort to prostitution in order to support herself. The other book is a study by Eva Clouet, a 23-year-old master’s student in sociology at the University of Toulouse II, Mirail. In La prostitution étudiante (Student Prostitution), Ms. Clouet focuses on how the advent of the Internet has facilitated certain kinds of prostitution, such as escort work, that students find more palatable than “traditional” streetwalking.

In publicity materials on its Web site, Max Milo, the publisher of both books, cites recent estimates by a student union that as many as 40,000 French students resort to prostitution to finance their studies.

The French newspaper L’Express, which published excerpts of Laura’s memoir, noted in its coverage of the two works that the police estimate the figure at 15,000 to 20,000 students.

A 2006 survey by Kingston University, an institution southwest of London, suggested that the number of British students resorting to sex-industry work to finance their studies had risen sharply in recent years, spurred by recent increases in university tuition.

Desperate students in Britain, Russia, Ukraine, and the United States have, however, long resorted to sex-related jobs to finance the cost of their studies. —Aisha Labi

Comments

1. OK, maybe this is how we convince lawmakers that Pell Grants and student loans need to be increased…

   — DS    Jan 21, 03:39 PM    #

2. OK, maybe this is how we convince lawmakers that prostitution needs to be legalized.

   — MP    Jan 21, 03:49 PM    #

3. At public universities, tuition is free and fees are about $240 a year — but the cost of living is crushing to anyone who is not at least middle-class.

   — Ex-pat in France    Jan 21, 04:18 PM    #

4. What the hell are the guys supposed to fall back on?

   — ds    Jan 21, 05:48 PM    #

5. odds are that there’ll be yet another corridor of deans, associates to be sure, on full salary and benefits, to insure that nothing substantive is done to get the hookers off the hook.

   — h.c.ecco    Jan 21, 07:09 PM    #

6. Visit any “gentlemen’s” club in or near a U.S. college town and you will find a whole lot of female students working there. This phenomenon is not restricted to France. A few years after I graduated from college it came to light that a townhouse across the street from where I lived was a student-run brothel.

   Ex-pat in comment 3 points out that tuition and fees are minimal in France. Is there no such thing as student loans to help offset the cost of living?

   — J. Ward    Jan 21, 09:48 PM    #

7. Hey, c’mon, they’re French! They probably would be hookers anyway.

   — George Gollin    Jan 22, 12:25 AM    #

8. One way or another, academe shall make whores of us all.

   — Constance Lavender    Jan 22, 05:15 AM    #

9. In response to comment 4…do you really think there are no male prostitutes? Come on…

   — Mary    Jan 22, 06:50 AM    #

10. In response to 7: substitute “black,” “Jewish,” “Chinese” or what you like for “French”: why do you think ethnic slurs are acceptable for the French?

    — Carol    Jan 22, 07:57 AM    #

11. Actually, there is nothing amusing in this story. The massive shift of education costs has increased exploitation in the service economy for nearly all students. The production of sex workers is facilitated by the same forces that produce cheap student labor in food service, child care, internships, etc. Increasingly these exploitative arrangements are presented as “financial aid,” with the eager cooperation of governments and administration. The real question isn’t, “Why are students becoming sex workers?” We know the answer to that. The question is: “When are we going to stop pimping our youth to loan vendors and low-wage employers?”
    http://howtheuniversityworks.com

    — Marc Bousquet    Jan 22, 08:39 AM    #

12. I think this raises some other issues. I had a student that missed several days because she was in jail for solicitation. She was trying to get an eduction to make a better life for herself. Because she missed days, I took time out to tutor her over the material she missed and gave her a makeup exam.

    Another instructor I know tried to get a student who was running an internet modeling business expelled from school for violating the school’s ethics policy.

    So do we help these students or do we vilify them?

    — rgmayne    Jan 22, 09:51 AM    #

13. This phenomenon has been around for a long time. In response to #4, when I was a student in the early seventies I worked as a room service waiter for a very good hotel. In response to requests from hotel guests I found female college students who were “working girls”, and sold their phone numbers to the guests. On a Friday night that was a good $200. That went a long way in the early seventies. Everybody involved liked the arrangement.

    — ex-student    Jan 22, 10:25 AM    #

14. Number 7, “George,” have a daughter? Sister? How insulting to all women, including those American students who also resort to such means.

    The situation speaks volumes to the fact that “il est triste que des gens ignorants comme George là-bas, rire à un problème réel.”

    — Anne    Jan 22, 10:27 AM    #

15. These young people could work for grades as well as money conducting action research on entreprenuership, price theory, and nogotiation. And what about leverage? Books,tuition, room and board are just for starts. What about sex for grades? Well, I suppose that is not such a novel concept. However, the possibilities for these resourceful students are without limit.

    — business major    Jan 22, 10:48 AM    #

16. Ahhh, so all those Playmate profiles really were true!!! They really were wholesome girls!!!

    — marci    Jan 22, 11:30 AM    #

17. I agree with the commentators who noted the distinct French cultural bias in this report. Unsurprising given America’s open-minded professoriate.

    One hardly has to look to France for examples of this sort of behavior.

    Frankly, there are teachers (not at the college-level) who I’ve known who have engaged in sex work to supplement low wages. In the case of my acquaintance he was a male sex worker.

    I wonder whether all the frivolous comments on here have considered the system of academic apartheid that has created an academic underclass in the form of adjunct professors at the community college level who perform the majority of those institutions’ teaching tasks at a fraction of the salary of tenured professors.

    Some county colleges are so segregated they actually have separate bathrooms for fulltime faculty.

    Civilization, as represented by academe in this instance, is alive and well, and its limits based on class distinctions and sex differences are as deeply embedded as ever.

    Amusement to the contrary.

    — Constance Lavender    Jan 22, 11:58 AM    #

18. Is it possible that an alternative story out of this would be that prostitutes at home and abroad are collectively exploring the benefits of higher education? I am not condoning or judging prostitution. I spent some time in France recently and happened to notice that there are alternative job opportunities in the country. That these students are choosing prostitution seems almost secondary to the fact that these prostitutes are choosing education.

    — ponderer    Jan 22, 12:20 PM    #

19. I’m sure if this phenomenon were studied in the US, the results would show little difference. The internet has provided a variety of methods to support sex work, from advertisements for prostitution to the proliferation of pornography to live webcam shows. I’ve known a number of people who have been involved in sex work of one kind or another to get through college (or even just to get by after a lay off). I’m not sure why this is news.

    — Jeremy Goodman    Jan 22, 12:24 PM    #

20. I went to college in the U.S. (midwest) and knew women who occasionally engaged in sex for pay. In one evening (dinner, perhaps a show, then a night in a hotel) they could earn $1000.00 upwards. With that kind of pay, they didn’t have to spend long-hours waitressing or working on-campus jobs. They could find nice apartments off-campus. They didn’t have to take out additional loans. They could spend the extra time and money working on their degrees. Most of them would work maybe once or twice a month, and could afford to be picky about who they chose as clients.
    Most of them have moved on to become doctors and educators—etc.
    In my experience, they were not prostitutes who found higher education—rather they were college girls who worked an occasional high-paying gig.

    Of course, you had to look like a model to get that kind of client. As for the rest of us—low-paying jobs and loans were a part of the student experience.

    — jas alexa    Jan 22, 01:25 PM    #

21. I’m with Jeremy # 19, on this one. We don’t call it the oldest profession for nothing! As long as we take pimps or other similar “services” out of the picture – no harm, no foul.

    It’s amazing to me that in the U.S. we’ll let an 18 year old strip naked and dance on a stage in front of 100 people but if she wants to make a little extra on the side here or there she’ll go to jail!

    — Frankie    Jan 22, 04:00 PM    #

22. Number 14: Anne, you called it right for no. 7’s ignorance. “Tres bien”

    — Anene    Jan 22, 04:17 PM    #

23. Oh, let’s not offer up too many protests, shall we? Who are we to judge these poor, unfortunate souls, after all? We’ve all done it, one way or another. Maybe we schmoozed Mom, Dad, or Grandma a little more than we would have, knowing that if we stayed “in good” there would be a free ride through the Alma Mater. Maybe we stayed at a job that we hated because it offered educational benefits and/or a good salary…smiled at the boss, said all the right things, assured our employer that we were definitely a team player in for the long haul, and then darted as soon as the diploma was in hand. Maybe we’ve stayed in a relationship, even a marriage, until we had time to “evaluate our options” after graduation, working our spouse as methodically as any prostitute ever worked a prospective client. Maybe, married or not, we even took on a wealthy lover or two on the side, making our move to capitalize on what nature had given us while we were still young and ripe enough to command favorable attention…and a high price. It may all have been perfectly legal, but make no mistake…anyone who did any of these things is just as guilty of “whoredom” as any tricked out strumpet that ever wiggle-wobbled down the street in a scarlet slip and a pair of five inch heels. And that means that very, very few of us – women OR men – have any room to judge these girls…

    — Michael    Jan 22, 04:20 PM    #

24. Agree wholeheartedly with #17—I too have known at least one educator who moonlighted as a sex worker, and who started when he was a college student. This by the way is an intelligent (as well as good-looking) man who by all accounts is a very good teacher.

    — Ken T.    Jan 22, 04:31 PM    #

25. Whatever. They could just as easily find a job at Le Starbucks. It’s a choice. Good for them if the money makes them happy. No one’s a victim here.

    — Elizabeth    Jan 23, 03:37 PM    #

26. Hell I’d do it if I could have some assurance the men would be disease free and not violent. Althought I’m not against spanking.

    — Christine    Jan 23, 04:11 PM    #

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