What will poor students resort to in order to raise money for their school fees and to support themselves?
Desperate times call for desperate measures, it seems, as these students prove.
Students by day, escorts by night
Fast money drew this graduate to escorting. Social science graduate Amber (not her real name), 23, tells her family she is in sales, but works as a social escort. She felt that making money from working in her family business was "too slow", and chanced upon a recruitment advertisement by social-escort firm Velvet 6 Management while searching for a better job.
When asked if escorts are any different from prostitutes, her reply was: "Nah, no difference. Prostitute, whore, courtesan, escort - they all have the same meaning."
NUS student-escort says: "What to do? I have to eat and pay my bills"
Are local university students strained by rising costs? By day, a third-year economics major who wants to be known only as Lynn attends classes at the National University of Singapore, usually clad in a simple getup of jeans and a tank top. But at night, while most other undergraduates are asleep, Lynn trades her casual wear for a wardrobe of resplendent dresses and works as a social escort, a job scorned and labeled distasteful by most. “It’s not exactly the most glamorous of jobs,” Lynn said. “I’m keeping it from my parents and most friends. But what to do? I have to eat my meals and pay my bills.”
Lynn belongs to a handful of varsity students taking on part-time jobs to finance their tuition fees and daily expenses. These students usually come from lower-income families with parents who are unable to foot the steep bills tagged to a tertiary education.
It is unclear how many such students there are, but like Lynn, some are holding jobs that involve long hours while others engage in menial labor. Some of these students say their grades have suffered from having to balance both work and studies.
Lynn's father, a truck driver, took a pay cut earlier in January and makes barely enough to sustain the household’s day-to-day expenses, let alone finance Lynn’s university education. To see herself through her degree, she has been juggling her studies with part-time jobs since she enrolled at NUS.
She said the nature of her job leaves her no time for schoolwork. “I usually can’t meet deadlines and sometimes I flunk modules,” she said. “But it’s better than not being able to afford my degree and then having to sell myself for the rest of my life.”
I wonder how many of our university undergrads have to resort to such means in order to get an education. But with work taking up so many hours of their time, most don't even have the time to study. What is the point?
And with tough times ahead, with possibly more financial burden on them, things will probably get worse.
