Zachary Glatt started a podcast network in tenth grade and has since interviewed executives from Burger King, Dodge, JetBlue, and Verizon. He transferred to Syracuse University to work with the school’s new Center for the Creator Economy, which says it’s the first academic center of its kind in the United States. Creators no longer have to learn everything on the fly: now there’s a syllabus.
Syracuse’s center is a joint venture of its Newhouse School of Public Communications and Whitman School of Management, led by Ryan Schram, a former president and COO of influencer-marketing company IZEA. It rests on four pillars: interdisciplinary academics, independent industry research, policy engagement, and support for creator ventures. Students from any major can minor in the creator economy, taking courses that include Name, Image and Likeness and Music Industry Marketing and Media. They can also join a “Creator Crew” for hands-on social media marketing, or attend a creator convention and a demo day with investors. The center has already published research, including a finding that YouTube has edged out TV as Americans’ top source for political news, and says it wants the creator economy federally recognized as an industry, one it values at $480 billion. Not everyone thinks the value is quite as high, though. Industry estimates cited alongside CreatorIQ’s creator survey put it closer to $250 billion.
Syracuse isn’t the only university getting in on the creator economy. Arizona State recently launched a bachelor’s degree in content creation. Stanford’s business school introduced a graduate course on the creator economy that drew a 110-person waitlist, according to its lecturer. YouTubers Colin and Samir spoke to the class and reportedly told students they don’t need more creators so much as people who can help grow their business. That’s what these universities seem to be focusing on. Not everyone can be in front of the camera, but a whole lot of people are needed behind the scenes. Schram says tens of millions of the roughly 50 million people in the creator economy worldwide are never even seen. They’re clippers, brand marketers, software builders, and the people handling representation and intellectual property. One psychology major, Schram explained, is signing up for the minor because she plans to open a therapy practice and expects to promote it on Instagram and TikTok.
These universities are hoping to be at the forefront of this new industry. A 2023 Morning Consult report found that more than half of young people want to be creators or influencers. And there seems to be more than enough money to create the infrastructure needed for this to be a real career path for many. After all, Live Nation just launched Creator Nation and is hiring across strategy, commerce, and touring. FOX has built out a creator studio with new executive hires. Adweek is accepting entries for a Power List honoring the executives behind the boom. “The creator economy needs strategists, analysts, operators, managers, commerce experts, technologists, and brand leaders,” said Cole Mancini Elboeck of Go Fish Digital.
But majoring in content creation isn’t a guarantee you’ll be rich. According to a CreatorIQ survey of more than 5,000 creators in 100 countries, 67 percent earned under $10,000 last year, and for 62 percent, creating wasn’t their primary income. Classes can teach the odds, but they can’t change them.
What’s interesting is that while these programs name content creation platforms like YouTube, TikTok, Spotify, Patreon, and Ko-fi, they fail to mention one of the most lucrative platforms of them all: OnlyFans. The platform has paid creators more than $30 billion over its first decade, but it is missing from the syllabus. Yet the lessons being packaged into courses are exactly the ones OnlyFans creators have been learning the hard way, in public.
Take taxes. Kylie Perez, who earned more than $5.4 million on OnlyFans, was sentenced to a year in federal prison for failing to pay what she owed, and Seathra Zmeena Orr pleaded guilty to evading taxes on more than $3 million. And then there are the banking issues that OnlyFans creators face. Isla Moon had to liquidate her retirement savings to cover payroll after a bank refused to lend against her investments once it learned her line of work. And can’t forget the intellectual property and AI issues creators are dealing with, fighting deepfake impersonators and stolen-content funnels while a chatbot company like Meta’s Muse gets to do what they can’t on Instagram. These are some of the same topics the new centers say they teach, and adult creators were the stress test.
None of this means colleges should build an OnlyFans minor. But if universities are going to treat the business of being online as a legitimate discipline, the case studies are already written. Will the curriculum include the part of the creator economy that had to figure it out without one?