Pornhub Cares: Adult entertainment giant offering 'happy' $25K college scholarship

PornHub is offering a $25,000(£16,000) college scholarship to a student who can adequately answer one of life's biggest conundrums: "How do you strive to make others happy?"

The adult entertainment company, which is one of the world's most-viewed pornography web sites with 78.9 billion online video views a year, is giving one lucky student the opportunity to learn for free to celebrate the launch of its brand-new philanthropic branch PornHub Cares.

According to the scholarship page, students must be 18 years old, have a GPA of 3.2 or higher in college and submit official transcripts. Candidates have also been asked to film a short video and submit an essay explaining how they strive to make others happy. The competition closes on October 31.

"We're always looking at different ways we can give back and we thought helping someone to go to college would be a great way," Pornhub's vice president, Corey Price, said in an interview with the Washington Post.

"Part of our inspiration is that we've seen a lot of people have a hard time getting money to go to college. We want to make it easier for one person who shares the same mission of spreading happiness."

In September 2014, Pornhub ventured into the world of music with the launch of its own record label, Pornhub Records. Weeks later it released festive single Coming for Christmas by TVXbabes. Rapper and pop culture icon Coolio has also released a song and video through the website.

Pornhub's goodwill efforts previously focused on cancer research and environmental charities but the company's first foray into education has already faced backlash from feminist groups, who argue that the campaign is a thinly veiled ploy to exploit young women who are struggling to pay the rising costs of higher education.

"A lot of younger people don't realize the consequences and harm of pornography," Dawn Hawkins, executive director of the National Center on Sexual Exploitation said. "These videos follow them the rest of their lives and affect their jobs and relationships in the future to have this out there. ... It's really unfortunate we're forcing our kids to sell their bodies to get an education."

But Price insists that this isn't about sex and applicants who submit racy videos "will not be seriously considered." Nudity, however, will not be a disqualifying factor.