Jackson Citizen Patriot: U-M, EMU students among those signing up to find 'sugar daddies' on dating website

By Cindy Heflin Associate news director

Posted on Wed, Jan 18, 2012 : 4:02 p.m.

The dating website SeekingArrangement.com recently published a list of the top 20 universities with the largest number of students signing up to be “sugar babies,” young people seeking financial help from older men or women in exchange for, ahem, companionship.

Part of the homepage from SeekingArrangement.com.

The University of Michigan was not on the list, but it had it had 57 signups in 2011 and has 208 since the website was founded in 2006, the Jackson Citizen Patriot reported. Eastern Michigan University had 43 in 2011 and 131 overall.

Michigan State University made the nationwide top 10, with 81 signups in 2011. New York University was first with 181 signups last year. See the full list here.

“In 2011, we saw an explosion in the number of college students seeking sugar daddies to help pay their college tuition,” Brandon Wade, founder and CEO of SeekingArrangement.com, said in a press release.

One in every two “sugar babies” who join the website today are college students, and college “sugar babies” now make up 40 percent of the site’s population, the release said.

The numbers and universities are identified by students who register on the site using their “.edu” email address. They automatically receive a free premium membership upgrade and are classified as “College Sugar Babies,” which receive three times more inquires from potential “Sugar Daddies,” the release said.