Twenty year old Catherine is getting ready for work. She finishes her immaculate makeup, slips on a Mango trench coat and double checks her bag before heading for the door. Handcuffs? Variety pack of condoms? Jumbo tube of sensitive lubrication? Two pairs of “back up" knickers?

Of course, this is not the usual rucksack paraphernalia of a second-year university student. Catherine is a prostitute and just one example of a growing number of students working within the sex industry.

That number has risen by 50 per cent over the past seven years according to research conducted by Kingston University, London.

An initial survey in 1999 asked 500 students if they knew of any friends who worked in the sex industry. More than four per cent had friends who lap danced, escorted or prostituted themselves during the course of their degrees.

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A second survey in 2006 showed that number had again climbed to six per cent and with a third study currently underway, more than eight per cent of the current student population is expected to be participating in sex work.

Dr Ronald Roberts, the psychologist leading the research said: “We anticipate that figure will continue to rise. What we can definitely say is that as long as student debt increases so will the numbers of students entering the industry. Since the introduction of tuition fee’s in 1998 there has been an increase in students undertaking this kind of work.”

It’s a situation which is becoming reality for some of the poorest students. Last month France’s education minister promised to increase financial support after the diary of a first-year student and a book of interviews with undergrads detailed their personal experiences of prostitution.

Dr Roberts said the French government is taking a much more proactive step towards tackling the problem compared with the British NUS: “Improving financial support [is] obviously a better way as it recognises it’s something to do with students having no money. The NUS however doesn’t want to know too much about it, it embarrasses them.”

According to a report recently published by Natwest bank, freshers’ are expected to spend £33,512 over the course of three years study, leaving university with an estimated debt of £14,779.

This is something Catherine hopes to avoid by working for a private escort agency. Despite working in a bar 20 hours a week during her first year, by the end of the second semester she found herself £5,000 in debt and struggling to manage her college workload.

“I’ll have worked off all the debt from my first year and got a good degree through doing this,” she said, “I could be stacking shelves in Tesco for £5 an hour but I choose to have a job where you can make a lot of money in a few hours and then actually have time to do my uni work properly."

A profile of Catherine is advertised online through her agency. The site encourages visitors to enquire after Catherine’s services, which include full sex, and describes her as “bright and bubbly” and “a young university student”.

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