'Companionship' for Bill Pay: Sugar Daddies a Growing Trend

Saddled with piles of bills, tuition payments and student loans -- college students and recent grads are struggling to make ends meet in this economy.

With a lack of jobs available, they're turning to other resources to avoid financial ruin.

It's a nation wide phenomenon -- the concept of having a sugar daddy has turned into a way to get an education here in Arizona.

It used to be the way to earn a fast buck. You've probably heard of people who have "danced" or "stripped" their way through college. Now the new generation is taking to the internet, and taking on a "companion" willing to foot the tuition bill.

"Hi beautiful I love your pics. I was intrigued by your beauty your desire to continue your education and still have fun. Let's make plans to talk and meet."

Nicole Hayes gets dozens of emails a day from men interested in a relationship.

"You don't have to love them, but you have to make sure they love you so you need them to want to do anything for you."

At 23, Hayes considers herself a sugar baby, and lives a lifestyle most people would envy. Trips, expensive clothes, bills all paid for by an all too generous, often older man -- a sugar daddy.

But Hayes, like so many other young women, is looking far beyond the material things to her future.

"I don't want to pay anyone back ever and I know that loans are high, they never go away you're stuck with it. I don't want to be stuck with debt, I want to be like debt free as long as possible," she says.

A full time student at a local college, Hayes recently had a full semester of classes, her books, even her laptop paid for by her sugar daddy.

It's a trend that's catching on as the economy continues to leave college students and graduates financially uncertain.

Sugardaddie.com, for example, has seen a 250 percent jump in female memberships since 2008.

"There is a definite line that is drawn that differentiates from prostitution from a sugar daddy, sugar baby relationship," says sugardaddie.com CEO Steven Pasternack.

He says the relationships that develop through his site are perfectly acceptable because both parties are completely honest about what they are looking for -- even the physical expectations.

"I don't think that it's prostitution, I think ultimately it does end at sex, it ends up being about sex ultimately," says Hayes.

The relationship between a sugar baby and her sugar daddy is consensual and legal, but the question many people are asking is -- is it ethical? Are these college girls acting like prostitutes, forgoing integrity in an effort to survive?

Licensed professional counselor Soozie Bolte says many women would say they are just surviving, but that the cost of this type of behavior varies from person to person.

"This is an economic interchange and it works for me and it works for him and who are you to judge me and how I do this and so yeah you can say that I am using him but look what he's getting for the opportunity to be with me," says Bolte.

Bolte thinks society and what is now considered the norm is one reason young women have a much more open attitude about their sexuality and are willing to enter a sugar daddy-sugar baby relationship.

"If we go back and look at societal stuff and the reality that that has gone on for years so there is a part of this that is not new, where female beauty and youth have always been put on a particular pedestal, and monetary gain and status, especially for men as also been put on a pedestal," say Bolte.

In the meantime, Hayes is studying to be an interpreter for the hearing impaired, and in-between courses is looking for her third sugar daddy. Her profile on sugardaddie.com has already yielded a few prospects -- men who are clearly willing to pay her way through school.

The concept of having a beneficiary or sugar daddy pay your bills and support your lifestyle is not limited to young women. Most of the websites out there have options for young men where they can meet sugar mommies.