Laura Sessions Stepp, the author of “Unhooked: How Young Women Pursue Sex, Delay Love and Lose at Both” asks audiences at her college-speaking engagements: Would you like to bring back dating?

The answer is overwhelmingly “yes.” Students are dissatisfied by the college hook-up culture.

Hooking up, defined as a sexual interaction outside of a romantic relationship and with no expectations beyond one night, is often problematic, particularly for women. Nonetheless, with dating -– romantic prospects formally spending time together — seemingly a relic of the past, college women continue to take part in the hook up culture.

Only 50 percent of college-age women indicate having been asked on six dates or more since beginning college, and a third of women surveyed were asked on two dates or fewer, according to “Hooking Up, Hanging Out, and Hoping for Mr. Right—College Women on Dating and Mating Today,” a 2001 report by the Independent Women’s Forum.

When dates are few and far between, women experiment with what for many is an undesirable, but unavoidable alternative: hooking up. “There’s a lot of just hooking up with people you don’t know, or people you regularly hook up with, but are not in a relationship with beyond the physical stuff,” said a junior at Stanford University. “Then, there are people who are practically married. But, there’s nothing really in between. There’s not much real dating.” She occasionally hooks up with strangers when intoxicated because she knows nothing else. “I feel like hooking up is the only way to satisfy my needs. It’s my only viable option,” she said.

Given this lack of traditional dating and relationships on college campuses, the college years are prime for hooking up. “You’re living cheek and jowl where there are no longer separate facilities for the sexes,” said Seaman, the author of “Binge: What Your College Student Won’t Tell You,” an examination of the excesses of modern campus life. “It’s almost like the system is begging you to hook up.”

He also believes that for women, hooking up is more difficult than dating. “Just as women feel they can belly up to the bars and drink as much as guys do, they also think they can probably engage in this kind of short-term sexual satisfaction the way they have seen guys do for a long time,” said Seaman. “But, in the end, even though that appears to be contributing to their freedom, they find it doesn’t get them very far. After they’ve had a hook-up, a lot of women still want a relationship.”

Others, like Salon staff writer Tracy Clark-Flory, consider the hook-up culture helpful to developing relationships. “There’s the potential for hooking up to be a very positive and healthy experience,” said Clark-Flory, whose 2008 feature for Salon, “In Defense of Casual Sex,” garnered hundreds of passionate responses. “Hooking up prepared me to be in long-term, committed relationships. It’s much more relaxed and much more natural.” Clark-Flory’s success in the hook-up culture likely stems from her ability to separate hooking up from relationships. But, many women seem unable to take that attitude, instead hoping their hook-ups will progress into long-term relationships. They are usually disappointed.

Of the 64 percent of college students who report having hooked up at least once, 43 percent of female survey participants indicated that a hook-up would ideally lead to a traditional romantic relationship. However, only six percent of those polled, both male and female, expected this outcome, according to the 2008 Binghamton University study, “Hook-Up Behavior: A Biopsychosocial Perspective.”

This disjunction can make hook-ups psychologically dangerous. “We want attachment, which like sex, is a fundamental desire,” said Justin Garcia, a researcher in the Laboratory of Evolutionary Anthropology and Health at Binghamton University, and the co-author of the study. “That desire for attachment is something we ignore, especially in the hook-up culture.”

One Syracuse University junior craves such emotional attachment. She dreams of a relationship in which she feels loved and appreciated, but at age 20, all of her sexual interactions have been hook-ups. “When I was 13, I swore that in the future, I would never have sex with anyone who wasn’t my boyfriend,” she said. “That changed as sex became more casual amongst people my own age. I realized that our culture is open to fulfilling those needs with people who aren’t our significant others.” Nonetheless, as she runs through a list of her sexual partners, it quickly becomes apparent that in the days following a hook-up, she is always worried about an awkward run-in.

She is not alone in her concerns. Sixty-one percent of women who have hooked up indicated their experience made them feel both “desirable” and “awkward” in “Hooking Up, Hanging Out, and Hoping for Mr. Right—College Women on Dating and Mating Today,” the 2001 Independent Women’s Forum report.

In an attempt to avoid this turbulent mix of emotions, some college women break their hook-up patterns once they realize that hook-ups do not lead to true love. A Barnard College senior is one such girl. “I look for a dating scene off-campus, at bars, events, and organizations,” she said. “There’s this unstated acknowledgment campus-wide that the men here are not interested in relationships.”