Student prostitutes on the up...if you raise fees.

As a student the potential fees increases hang pretty heavily in the forefront of my mind. Not necessarily because it will affect me directly, but because, despite assumptions, as someone currently in the situation under discussion I do care.

Combine this with the recent unveiling of the identity of Belle du Jour and I was stuck by an interesting possibility.

If you raise fees are you going to end up with more student strippers and prostitutes?

Don't laugh, its already on the up. Belle herself became a call girl to cover PHD debt. A google search for the potentially rather compromising combination of 'student' and 'pole dancing' not only reveals a lot of classes taking place at universities around the country, but includes a report from several years ago in The Times about Cambridge students not only learning but getting paid to do this. I was actually looking for an article I remember from not long ago about students from a London university taking up work in a strip club, but my searches have proved unsuccessful thus far.

I don't wish to discuss whether this is moral, or right, that's another story. But it certainly isn't on the election manifesto of any of the three major political parties to legalise prostitution, and I'm not sure they're that comfortable discussing the future's bright young things dancing topless in bars either. It's heated enough collars as it is trying to contemplate that anyone with higher education would go into prostitution. By raising fees might the Government end up with more money in the education pot, but a whole different kettle of problematic naked fish to deal with?

The plight of students from low income houses has been raised, but if my prediction comes true then what about male students? The now rather more obvious search for 'PHD' and 'prostitute' pulls up an interview in New Scientist with Brooke Magnanti aka Belle du Jour, and one male commentor remarks that he would have considered prostitution for a financial stress free doctorate if he was a woman. Women it seems have a lucrative way of supporting themselves; boys faced working behind rather than on a bar might have less luck.

The same search also gets a quote from Catherine Stephens, and activist for the International Union of Sex Workers: “At a brothel I worked in, I think I was the only one not doing a PhD.” Convinced yet?

I don't think I'd be swayed, but then its not, as is so often pointed out, (including already in this article), me who is actually facing the debt increase. When push come to shove maybe that is what more female students would rather.