BLOG: How the ‘sponsor’ phenomenon is affecting college students
A large number of women, most of them university and college students, are increasingly getting into relationships with rich, elderly men who sustain their lifestyles in what has come to be known as the “sponsor” phenomenon.
It affects both married and single women and has lately been the cause of friction in many marriages.
But it also affects the education of the young, campus students. Some of them no longer attend lectures regularly because they have to fit their schedules with those of the “sponsors”.
During examinations, they resort to using ‘mwakenya’ (small sheet of paper with short notes) as back-up as they confront the test questions.
Others simply opt to pay bright students to sit the examinations for them.
Not to be outdone, many male university students, shunned by their female colleagues because they cannot meet their financial demands, have also turned to elderly women with money to spend on them, giving additional momentum to the “sponsor” wave.
