Tuesday, February 09, 2016

Getting an education


It seems today is THE day for education stories! I learn that there's an app called "seeking arrangement" that allows hard up students to hook up with "sugar-daddies" that assist them with their tuition fees and other expenses (pot noodles?) in return for, er, shall we say "undisclosed services"; I think we can all imagine what that might be.

Whilst I'm all in favour of entrepreneurship and smart new ways of using technology, I'm less keen on the idea that we value further education so poorly that students have to resort to the oldest game in the book in order to make ends meet. The app vendors say that their business is up 40% over last year so clearly there is a market for this kind of thing, I guess so long as both parties are consenting and there are suitable safe-guards then I suppose it's one way to get a degree. In my day we got a grant from the local council to go to university, nowhere near as "exotic" as this of course, but on reflection if there was a "sugar mummy" service as a way of earning some extra cash I wonder how many 19 year old male undergrads would take it up?

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