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One in three women strippers in the UK are students from middle-class families, according to a new study. Researchers said students are working as strip club dancers so that they could fund their studies or they might find it exciting. 

"The core reasons for entry into stripping by students were the high cost of higher education, the lack of availability of loans and support for vocational courses and the ability to combine stripping work with the demands of educational courses, due to the flexibility it offered," the study said.

Researchers considered around 200 dancers in towns and cities and interviewed them before reaching to the conclusions. 

They found that around one-third of the strip club dancers are students and most of them are using the cash earned to support their own studies. However, the research noted that many students were not motivated by the alluring income prospect of the industry. 

"Many of these dancers are from middle-class backgrounds - they are not coming from families where money is a big issue,"  said Teela Sanders, co-author of the study, according to Financial Express. 

Sanders added that a number of students see themselves as "dancers, not sex workers" as "selling striptease had become more palatable and socially acceptable."

"They enjoyed dressing up to go out and many say it wasn't too different to heading out on a night out," Sanders added.

There was a definite tension between the 'old school' dancers who were there to earn good money and the new, inexperienced younger women who had a range of motives for entering stripping, reported Financial Express. 

The study is published in the British Journal of Sociology of Education.