New York (CNN) — Influencing is Gen Z’s new glamour job. So if more than half of young people say they want to be influencers, why not study it?
Arizona State University recently announced a bachelor’s degree in content creation for those who “dream of monetizing your video channel or making social media your career,” according to ASU’s website.
And this fall Syracuse University is launching “an interdisciplinary minor designed to prepare students for careers in content creation, digital entrepreneurship and the broader ecosystem supporting creators and online businesses.”
Fewer young people now see college as a gateway toward white collar employment and upward mobility. And college kids have a lot stacked up against them: Artificial intelligence. Trump’s new student loan rules. A job market seemingly allergic to hiring new college grads.
The booming influencer economy — and the seemingly overnight success of some creators — have instead become a new career inspiration for many young adults. Goldman Sachs estimated that the creator economy could be worth nearly $500 billion by 2027.
ASU says its program is preparing students for careers from brand storytelling to podcasting. Courses include “How to Become an Influencer” and a capstone at the school’s Los Angeles Content Creation Studio.
(The school told CNN it is not taking interviews about the new major.)
For aspiring content creators, the ivory tower can now be something else, too: a production set.
“The college campus really is a playground for (aspiring influencers) to be successful,” said Dylan Huey, a 24-year-old who founded REACH, a national organization at college campuses that’s focused on the social media and entertainment industries.
A look into campus
Americans are losing confidence in higher education. The percentage of U.S. adults who have very little or no confidence in higher education jumped from 10 per cent in 2015 to 32 per cent in 2024, according to Gallup. Nearly a third cited high costs or said colleges don’t prepare students well for the modern workforce.
Ryan Schram, the executive director of Syracuse’s Center for the Creator Economy, views the school’s content creation minor as a gateway into jobs that didn’t exist a decade ago.
“A lot of the students that we have talked to, their number one desire for a career path is something in the creator economy, but not all of them want to be behind the mic,” he said.
In 2026, content creation has crept into all types of resumes.
“Having a digital presence means that you can get a job,” Huey said, even if that means filming finance TikToks alongside completing your engineering degree.
Huey is an example of this new type of hustle – he said he reached 1 million followers as a creator at 15 and began representing social media personality Lil Huddy by the next year. And the ability to influence goes beyond Instagram and TikTok.
“Most people who get laid off, their first place that they go to is LinkedIn,” he said. “And if you don’t have a personal brand on LinkedIn, you don’t have a following on LinkedIn. If you don’t have a network, then who’s going to see that?”
College life has become ripe for content in recent years, from Alabama’s viral sorority rush to Alix Earle’s origin at the University of Miami. Earle makes up to $450,000 per Instagram Story, the New York Times wrote last year.
2024 was an inflection point for content creation as a career path, after years of build-up through the pandemic and beyond, Brooke Erin Duffy, a communications professor at Cornell University, told CNN.
“People were laid off and furloughed but also realizing that work could be another way,” Duffy said. “It was the perfect storm, that plus the sudden uptick on TikTok.”
Everyone has to hustle
Many daydream of getting paid big bucks to post videos of matcha and Pilates classes. But the influencer market is simply oversaturated, Freddy Tran Nager, an associate professor at University of Southern California, told CNN, who has taught a class called Influencer Strategies since 2018.
Content creator wannabes need to find a niche, he said. And maybe pick up a second major in something like literature or theology, an increasingly common piece of advice in the age of AI-generated content.
“An everyday student going into one of these programs who doesn’t who isn’t an athlete, who doesn’t have super model good looks or isn’t a natural-born comedian” might have an uphill battle, he said.
“Influencing has a success rate about equal to acting,” he said.
Brands are also getting stingier about who they work with and how much they shell out – not everyone is getting that free trip to Coachella anymore.
“Yes, we hear accounts of Alix Earle, but reality is a lot of people are barely scraping by,” Duffy said.
Tran Nager hopes new programs like ASU’s content creation degree emphasize the social media industry’s difficulties, too.
“It is a hyper-competitive industry. There’s too much content, and AI is coming on strong,” he said, “which is why it’s nice if you have that day job working in an insurance company processing claim forms.”
