Purdue University Saran Mishra ties the birth of the porn career of Duke student Belle Knox to the death of affordable education.

A Duke freshman’s two-syllable porn star name is a trending topic now on the Web, but more importantly, her story gives rise to an ever-growing social issue.

Belle Knox – don’t even pretend like you haven’t heard the name – has been Googled more times than the likes of Pope Francis and Justin Bieber, as The Independent reported last week.

Knox, whose real name is Miriam Weeks, is a freshman majoring in sociology and women’s studies at the prestigious and private Duke University, which costs a whopping $60,000 a year for tuition with living expenses. She claims she initially went into the adult entertainment industry to help pay for her tuition at Duke.

I personally do not condemn Knox’s career choice. Why should we force her into a corner where she has to defend her choice of vocation by becoming a self-proclaimed feminist? Isn’t this how the market is supposed to work – producing output, which in this case is the availability of college education? That goes down as prices soar, lowering income power and forcing an individual to gain income elsewhere to keep up with the equilibrium.

To localize the issue a bit, Purdue students are in an interesting boat when it comes to tuition. We know what it is and will be for the short term, due to President Mitch Daniels’s freeze, thus we know the hill we have to climb. But that does not change the fact that Purdue’s tuition and the tuitions of both public and private universities are at record highs.

In 1965, the average cost of in-state tuition, room and board at a public university in America was $6,592, according to the U.S. Department of Education. By 2013, the same number had shot up to $13,233.

…Knox should not be scapegoated by her largely conservative critics for responding how any market factor is supposed to react. She indeed was a smart investor – in 2006, the global porn industry had a revenue of $97.06 billion.Why should Knox, or anyone for that matter, be denied the chance for upward mobility? I believe that as the price of college keeps soaring, surely we will see students doing other odd jobs to keep themselves in college.