sunny,
I am sorry for being so unclear. SUD-Etudiant is the most radical leftist nationwide student union; they are affiliated to the LCR (Ligue Communiste Révolutionnaire), a political party which supports the Swedish model*. SUD does cetainly not present prostitution as a "job opportunity" for female students in need. On the contrary, they present this as a preoccupating situation that is the consequence of students' impoverishment.
The article was published in Le Figaro, one of France's two most important daily papers; it has a right-of-center to right-wing leaning (the other one is Le Monde, which is more or less left-of-center).
The context in which this has been discussed is that the Ministry of Education has announced a drastic reduction of all students scholarships. SUD's data do not come from a real study, but are probably on empirical results given by their local branches. I agree that one cannot use the numbers as such, but it is important to note that this phenomenon is usually
underreported by the social agencies regulating student life. Fee were traditionally low in France, no comparison with the USofA or Japan, so people don't expect to hear that it also happens here. This isn't new for foreign students (especially from Third-world countries) whose scholarship gets suddenly cut by their government, but you rarely see this about students who are French citizens.
The journalist asked the Observatoire de la Vie Etudiante (Student Life Observatory), a governmental agency, for "balance": they say they cannot confirm the numbers, but they are aware of the situation. According to them, over than 45 000 students live in extreme poverty, while 225 000 have difficulties financing their studies.
I have a few issues with the way the article is written myself (I cannot develop them because of language problems), but they do not "try to equate actual prostitutes to student prostitutes by using an estimate". In fact, they stress the difference with young prostitutes who "pose" as students and link it to the male customers' demand for "student girls in need" (they give Craigslist-like examples of "sex as rent" scenarios). The last paragraph mentions a recently dismantled ring that used young Moroccan women who all had a student ID but were in fact "full-time" prostitutes. This is
not the situation SUD-Etudiant refers to.
Added later: the woman in the article is not Belgian; she is a French woman from the Nord (North) départment, which is close to Belgium. The fact that there are French prostitutes in Belgian brothels is not new; I think they took her example because she did it while studying, but they don't make her sound like a "happy hooker".
*The Figaro article was referred to on the website of yet another organisation, the Parti des Travailleurs (Workers' Party, which I also have issues with, but that's a long story):
http://www.parti -des-travailleurs.org/index.php