Show some enterprise applicants, show some imagination.

So come the directions from of the world’s most popular pornography sites as it offers $US25,000 college scholarship for an American student, who will be selected partly on the content of homemade video submission that seeks to answer the question: “How do you strive to make others happy?”

Officials at Pornhub, the adult entertainment website that claims to have 78.9bn online video views annually, admit the scholarship may be a little controversial and not to everyone’s taste. Yet they have rejected claims that it will encourage exploitation of low-income women, or men.

Dawn Hawkins, executive director of the National Centre on Sexual Exploitation, told the Washington Post it was “an amazing and deceptive marketing tactic,” aimed at poor students.

“A lot of younger people don’t realise the consequences and harm of pornography,” she 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.”

Pornhub.com’s campaign website says the successful applicant could be studying "medicine, botany, paranormal psychology, or anything in between".

Pornhub Vice President Corey Price said he accepted that the scholarship could be considered controversial, but he said applicants did not have to film pornography to win.