🔴 How colleges are teaching the creator economy

Arizona State University launched (ostensibly) the first content creation major this year. Syracuse University launched a minor. Emerson College announced last week that it’ll offer a major next year.

How do you teach the creator economy? And what can those of us long past college age, already working within the industry, take away from the answers?

Answers as you scroll.

— Francis Zierer, Lead Editor

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As good an indication as any that the creator economy is maturing, that the ways people do business within it are settling, becoming routine: colleges and universities are teaching for it. Students can pay tens of thousands of dollars to prepare for well-defined jobs within the industry.

But how do you teach the creator economy in the ivory tower? And what does the answer suggest about the shape of the industry to come?

A decade from now, I’d bet, most colleges and universities will have some form of creator programming. Technically, they already do, and have for decades: communications, music, entrepreneurship, journalism programs all fit the bill.

So what did Arizona State University mean when, this past summer, they announced one of the nation’s first content creation degrees? What did Emerson College mean when, just last week, they announced a content creation B.A.?

The Emerson program’s landing page suggests these possible career paths for content creation majors:

The ASU major includes 40 possible classes “that cover content strategy, audience analytics, digital influence and media entrepreneurship.” The major has a 14-course spine, with additional courses in specific content creation skills.

Looking through the courses composing these programs, I see many similarities to the options available to me as a Rhetoric & Media major during the early 2010s (the program was essentially a liberal arts rebranding of “communications”). Even then, my studies prepared me for at least half of the roles on Emerson’s list. So, what changed?

The difference between what has been and what is becoming at these colleges is a focus on entrepreneurship. Beyond that, it’s a rebrand, just a way for a new generation of students to understand their potential career trajectories. File in the same drawer as: tech companies rebranding content marketing teams as “narrative” or “storytelling” teams.

It’s also a matter of practicality: an acknowledgment that there are now fewer major media companies and fewer roles to fill, from journalism to film and everywhere in between. Whither the would-be staff writer? To Instagram, TikTok, YouTube. You’re on your own, kid.

Except — new media companies abound. Creators are founding them! B2B companies are launching media arms! Skydance might soon win Monopoly, but where old trees fall, new growth is abundant. This is the present state justifying these new college programs.

My colleague Natalia Pérez-González and I spoke last week to Ryan Schram, recently appointed executive director of Syracuse University’s Center for the Creator Economy (CCE). ASU claims to have one of the first content creation majors; Syracuse claims to have the first creator economy center.

What does “center” mean in this context? Educating young adults is only one part of the equation; there are four pillars:

In other words, the CCE aims to shape and influence the industry as it formalizes, as ways of doing business increasingly resemble those in other, older media and entertainment industries. The industry has matured enough to justify such an organization.

Syracuse’s approach to the field is defined by a focus on business inseparable from any creative product. If and when they launch a major, Ryan said, it will be a bachelor of science, not art.

Apropos, Ryan was hired from industry, not academia; before taking the job, his only role at Syracuse was advising on the Center’s creation. If the organization seeks to prepare students for gainful employment, this is surely the right move.

From 2011 to 2024, Ryan was an executive at IZEA, a pioneering creator marketing company. The same year he joined, YouTube began referring to top users as “creators”; his career has tracked with the lifetime of the creator economy as it exists today.

Syracuse’s Center is a collaboration between Newhouse and Whitman, its journalism and business schools. This is the first time the two schools have collaborated in this manner; this is what it means to teach the creator economy: the two disciplines as one; art and commerce inseparable.

What, precisely, does the Syracuse University creator economy minor entail?

Three required courses:

Three electives from a selection of sixteen. These include general skill and strategy-focused courses, as well as industry-specific courses. Here are a few:

Notably, none of the required courses focus on content creation, and few of the electives do. This is key to the Center’s approach. Ryan stressed that they wanted to avoid structuring the program too much on creative work:

Natalia went to Syracuse for her journalism master’s in 2021 and 2022. Even then, just a few years ago, she said entrepreneurship was barely a part of the conversation. In all her journalism classes, business was “a very small piece of the pie,” left for students to figure out on their own. And “business” conversations were typically more about freelancing than creator-style entrepreneurship.

I sought out Ryan because I wanted an answer to the question of why and how a university should teach the creator economy; especially in an era when higher education is more expensive and less reliable a guarantee of a great job than ever; especially because the creator economy as we know it is predicated on a side-stepping of gatekeepers; an algorithm-based meritocracy.

The answer I’ve formed since our conversation is this: for any professional, literacy in the tactics, tools, and strategies of creator-style digital media is a necessity.

Of course, to a hammer everything looks like a nail, and I write about the creator economy for a living.

But for anyone in a public-facing role, for anyone with anything to sell, posting ability is a leg up. When I entered high school 18 years ago, learn to code was a mantra. Today, when you can vibe-code basic apps just by dictating into Claude with Wispr Flow, digital media production and distribution literacy is at least as important.

At Syracuse, Ryan told me, the creator economy minor is open to any student, regardless of major. This is rare across the university. He told me about a psychology major he met recently who is taking classes in the creator economy minor.

He asked why. She plans to eventually move home and open a therapy practice serving tweens and teens. To market her practice, she could do what medical practices have done “forever”: sponsor park benches and little-league teams.

Or, he remembers her telling him, “I could learn how to personally brand myself and create content and do so in such a cadence where now I have the reputation of attracting parents who have these needs for their kids.”

In a decade or so, whenever this student might be able to open her own practice, will we still be using Instagram? TikTok? YouTube? Will these platforms still be defined by algorithmically distributed video?

There’s no way of knowing, but I’d bet on it.

Platforms aside, it’s clear that an understanding of digital media strategy, analysis, and business principles will leave this generation of students well equipped.

Storytelling, narrative, communications; whatever you call it, it’s as old as campfires, and will be relevant until the last one burns out.