After it was revealed yesterday that an increasing number of women are using the sex industry to pay their way through university, one woman has told her story of stripping while studying.
Emma Green, of Glamorgan, Wales, turned to stripping on a webcam for men and earned £200-a-week to fund her studies.
The 25-year-old, who studied multi-media design at Glamorgan University before spending another year at a beauty therapy college in 2009, says a normal part-time job was out of the question because of her intense course workload.
Desperate measures: Emma Green, who is also a glamour model in South Wales and started webcam stripping to pay for her uni fees
Career change: After studying multi-media design at Glamorgan University and studying beauty therapy, Emma still now works for the webcam company
‘I loved both courses, but there were no grants, no funding. Nothing. I literally had nothing to live on’, she told The Sun.
Emma spoke out after the National Union of Students warned that as well as sex work, students are turning to gambling and medical experiments to pay for their education.
Emma said some weeks she was living on as little as £40 before stripping and after claiming a student loan, she found herself buried in debt.
A friend told her about the webcam work and informed her that all she needed was a computer with a camera
‘It seemed too good to be true so I tried it out and I must admit the first time I was nervous and didn’t make much money,’ Emma told the newspaper.
‘But after a few goes and the initial shock of going topless and stripping down to my thong, I began to get used to it’, she added.
Part time work: Emma worked for two to three hours, four nights a week, and earned £200 per week from webcam stripping
Miss Green, who now works for Britain’s Got Webcams, says she would strip for two to three hours a night each week – earning between £16 and £20 per hour.
Glamour girl: Emma posing in a Nuts T-shirt at home
The wage was enough to pay her fees and Emma, who lives with her parents in Glamorgan, says she still now earns £200 a week with the company.
She says she’ll stop stripping once she finds a full time job but says there are none available at the moment for young people.
Emma said: ‘I earn my own money and I’m getting through this recession in the best way I can without having to live off the state.’
Government reforms mean universities can start charging up to £9,000 annually in tuition fees from next year.
In addition, the education maintenance allowance (EMA) for 16 to 19-year-olds has been scrapped.
It is these reforms that are causing students to turn to the 'informal' sector for money, according to the NUS.
Estelle Hart, the NUS national women’s officer, told BBC Radio 5 Live Breakfast: 'Students are taking more dangerous measures.
'In an economic climate where there are very few jobs, where student support has been massively cut, people are taking more work in the informal economy, such as sex work.
'It’s all dangerous unregulated work, simply so people can stay in education.
The NUS also told BBC 5 live Breakfast it estimated about 20 per cent of women working in lap dancing clubs were students.
A Department for Education spokesman said: 'We are targeting £180 million a year financial support at the most vulnerable 16 to 19-year-olds to help them continue their studies - with transitional funding for the students who were getting the top rate of EMA and partway through their studies.
'It is down to schools and colleges themselves to award bursaries to young people who need the most help.
'If students are really struggling financially, they need to speak directly to their tutors.'
A spokesman for the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills said: 'Under the current university funding system, no student has to pay in advance for tuition.
Battling the recession: Emma says she'll continue stripping until she can find a full time job, but says there aren't any for young people at the moment and she's just getting through the recession
Independent woman: Emma says she doing her best to earn her own money without having to live off the state
'There is a generous package of financial support to help with living costs in the form of loans and non-repayable grants.
'Our reforms will make the system even fairer, with more financial support and lower monthly repayments once you are in well-paid work.'
A spokesman for the NUS said although they did not have any quantitative evidence, they backed Ms Hart's comments.
'Anecdotally we are seeing a lot more of this and when you combine this with other reports there does seem to be an increase (in students working in the sex industry),' he said.
'We don't have any quantitative basis to back it up but we are confident to say this is an increasing problem.
'This hasn't originated from us but we are very confident standing by what Estelle said to 5 Live.'
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