It was perhaps only a matter of time before an industry built largely by teenagers in their bedrooms found its way into the lecture halls of serious research universities.

In the past year, Arizona State University introduced a bachelor's degree in content creation, Stanford University's Graduate School of Business began offering a course called Mastering the Creator Economy, and Syracuse University opened the Center for the Creator Economy, which focuses on research, policy and, naturally, content production. The approaches vary — Syracuse emphasizes interdisciplinary study; Stanford leans toward the business and investment implications — but together they suggest that what began as a marketing curiosity has become, in the eyes of academia at least, a legitimate field of study.

"The creator economy has crossed the line from an emerging marketing channel into a legitimate business discipline," said Cole Mancini Elboeck, vice president of social commerce at Go Fish Digital. "Academia catching up is another sign that this is becoming a durable part of how modern businesses reach, acquire customers and influence the market."

A 2023 report from Morning Consult found that more than half of young people want to be creators or influencers, which helps explain why universities are following rather than leading. (One does not typically associate higher education with being fashionably late, but here we are.)

Ryan Schram, executive director of Syracuse's new center, said the university wanted to set realistic expectations for students drawn to the field's surface glamour. "When you think about the creator economy — the 50 million people worldwide that participate — that sounds really sexy on the surface," Mr. Schram said. "But tens of millions of those people are the folks that you don't see in front of a camera." He cited clippers, affiliate marketers, and the people building what he called "creator-centric SaaS tools."

Syracuse is allowing any student to minor in the creator economy, regardless of major. Mr. Schram recalled meeting a psychology student who explained her reasoning: "I'm going to have a therapy business someday, and I'm going to need to promote my practice on Insta and TikTok."

One imagines Freud would have had thoughts about that.

Original story published in Digiday: "Welcome to Creator University: Inside the colleges building creator economy programs"