A College Degree for Creators

You can soon get a college degree in the creator economy.

Syracuse University is launching a “Center for the Creator Economy” this fall. The academic center will provide education, research and industry partnerships in digital content and entrepreneurship. The university will also offer students a minor degree in the creator economy.

“When you talk to students and young people, they want to be creators,” Alex McKelvie, the interim dean of Syracuse's Whitman School of Management, told Scalable. He added that the university is now expected to prepare students for this type of career.

It’s a major moment for an accredited university to launch a dedicated academic curriculum for the creator economy. The industry is now one of the fastest-growing job sectors in the US, but being a creator is almost an entirely self-taught profession. 

In 2025, there were more than 1.5 million full-time equivalent digital content creators in the US, up almost eightfold since 2020, according to the IAB. That is more than the number of licensed physicians and active lawyers, based on data from the Federation of State Medical Boards and the American Bar Association.

But medical school and law school have very defined curriculums. The creator economy doesn’t. Instead, it overlaps with many different industries and is constantly changing. Plus, while most people understand the content side of being a creator, fewer grasp the operational side and the diversity of creator businesses.

“Creators need both media literacy and business literacy,” said Stephanie Patrick, co-founder of Theorist Media, who joined Jasmine for a live recording of the Scalable podcast at Syracuse’s satellite campus in Los Angeles last week. Creator Nick Urteaga and Michael Curtis, CEO and founder of Proud Management, were also part of the conversation, available now on YouTube, Spotify and anywhere else you get your podcasts.

Students minoring in the creator economy at Syracuse will have to take three mandatory courses in business, media and entrepreneurship. They must also choose from a number of electives, including courses focused on marketing, media businesses, trendspotting in digital media, sports content and AI for creatives.

The breadth of Syracuse’s curriculum sets it apart from creator economy programs offered at other universities, many of which are geared toward professionals or graduate students or are narrower in scope.

UCLA Extension, for example, has offered continuing education classes in social media, marketing and influencers since at least 2018. Cornell University has held a graduate seminar called “Platforms, Power and Precarity in the Creator Economy.” And in 2022, MrBeast and East Carolina University announced they would develop a credentialing program for creators. It’s unclear what happened. 

At Syracuse, creator economy courses will be taught by professors and adjunct professors, many of whom are active in the industry themselves. Classes will take a hands-on approach to learning, similar to how the university’s entrepreneurship classes are run. McKelvie told us Syracuse is also hiring for an executive director to lead the Center for the Creator Economy. 

For that role, “the main criteria, if not the primary criteria, is embeddedness and expertise in the space,” McKelvie said.

To keep the curriculum current, the university also plans to bring in guest lecturers. Harvard Business School has taken a similar approach, inviting celebrities and top influencers including Kim Kardashian and Alix Earle to lead classes. 

While McKelvie told us he doesn’t expect the Kardashians in Syracuse’s classrooms anytime soon, we bet there will be a long list of creators raising their hands to guest lecture.

Our hands are definitely raised!

In other news…

We might soon get an answer as to what really happened between Alex Cooper and Alix Earle. Last February, Earle’s podcast was dropped from Cooper’s podcast network but the reason why was unclear.

Cooper on Monday publicly called out Earle in a video for passive-aggressively liking and reposting negative videos about her since the split. Earle later reposted Cooper’s video and commented: “Okay on it!!”

We’ll leave the analysis of the drama to all the pop culture creators out there. But we did recently dive into how the Alexes are building out separate empires since their business relationship soured. Cooper’s company Unwell now has about 100 employees and includes a marketing agency, reality TV shows, energy drinks and more. Earle, meanwhile, will star in an upcoming Netflix reality show and just launched her own skincare brand, Reale Actives, which quickly sold out.

We broke it all down in this YouTube video, which is also embedded below.

Side note: We found it interesting that Cooper chose not to post her video calling out Earle on her Instagram profile. Instead, she posted a snippet of it on her Instagram Story with a link to watch the full thing on TikTok. We’ve noticed other creators using this tactic lately and are curious about the deeper strategy behind the move.

Cooper’s following on Instagram is about twice the size of her TikTok following. Earle, meanwhile, shot to fame on TikTok and has a larger following there than on Instagram. That suggests that the video could have been intended more for Earle’s audience than her own.

Cooper’s Instagram account also feels more curated and business-like than her TikTok account, including the content on her profiles and the names of the accounts. On Instagram, she goes by @alexandracooper. On TikTok, her account name is @fathercooper. As we discussed in the video, there’s a duality to Cooper and she may have thought TikTok was a better fit for that content.

If you have your own theory on why Cooper and other creators are using Instagram Stories to drive viewers to TikTok videos, reply to this email! We’d love to hear from you. 

• Meta Platforms is expected to surpass Google in digital ad revenue for the first time, according to estimates from EMARKETER. Meta’s ad business has been on a tear lately thanks to its investments in AI. Google’s business has been under pressure from platforms like Amazon, as well as AI platforms, which have been rolling out their own ad offerings. That’s one reason why parent company Alphabet has been putting a bigger emphasis on YouTube and its creators to drive ad revenue. More on that here and here.

• Meta removed ads from law firms seeking clients for future social media addiction lawsuits, following a landmark ruling that found Meta and YouTube liable, Axios reported. “We will not allow trial lawyers to profit from our platforms while simultaneously claiming they are harmful,” a Meta spokesperson said. Read about the ramifications of the trial for creators here. 

• An AI version of CEO Mark Zuckerberg is in the works at Meta, the Financial Times reported. 

The AI clone is being trained on the executive’s mannerisms, tone and public statements and will be used internally to help employees feel more connected to their boss, according to the FT. The move feels unsettling for many reasons, including that Zuckerberg is one of the most visible and influential business leaders worldwide and it could have major ramifications if the clone gets into the wrong hands.

The Institute for Responsible Influence, an initiative launched earlier this year, rolled out its certification program on Monday. The program trains creators to properly disclose sponsorship deals and follow FTC guidelines. Go deeper: We discussed US influencer guidelines and how other countries like the United Arab Emirates are approaching regulation of the creator economy in a podcast episode earlier this year. 

Jesser, the basketball and sports creator with 40 million YouTube subscribers, announced a holding company called JesserCo, which includes his social media business and Bucketsquad, his sportswear and lifestyle apparel business. Jesser, whose real name is Jesse Riedel, is the latest creator to professionalize their business via a holding company after hiring a seasoned executive to lead the company. See our timeline of creators’ executive hires.

Skyhorse Publishing launched a book imprint with Tucker Carlson, the former Fox News host turned podcaster, the Wall Street Journal reported. Called Tucker Carlson Books, it plans to publish books from controversial figures including actor Russell Brand, who has been accused of sexual assault, and far-right commentator Milo Yiannopoulos.

Elon Musk appears to have joined TikTok. A verified account with the handle @elonmusk has posted one video so far on the app. Musk, who owns X, has been critical of other social media apps, even briefly barring users from promoting their other social accounts on X. But he has occasionally praised TikTok. He may also be looking to improve his image among people outside of his core fans, many of whom are on X.

Tara Walpert Levy, a long-time YouTube executive, announced she would leave the company this summer after 15 years. Tim Katz will take over the Americas business. Katz has also been at YouTube for 15 years, most recently as vice president of partnerships. 

Khartoon Weiss, who until recently led TikTok’s North American ads business, is joining Google where she’ll be vice president of US mid-market sales, focused on commerce. 

Jorge Ruiz, the global head of marketing science at TikTok, announced he’s leaving the company after more than six years. He didn’t announce next steps. 

Damir Kasimov, who most recently was TikTok’s content strategy manager for Asia-Pacific, joined Meta as a partner solutions manager. Kasimov spent eight years at the company, beginning as an intern for Musical.ly, which was later acquired by ByteDance and morphed into TikTok. 

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