At least 13 UK universities and colleges now offer degrees focused specifically on influencer and content creation, as students increasingly choose courses aimed at social media careers over traditional media and journalism programmes.
The expansion reflects the growing influence of social media on young people’s career ambitions, with becoming an influencer identified as a dream job by children as young as seven.
Research earlier this year found that 60 per cent of middle and high school students either wanted to become influencers or had chosen a career influenced by social media. Younger children and teenagers were particularly likely to name becoming a social media star as an aspiration.
Other popular ambitions included becoming footballers, musicians, actors and, for some children, princesses. Even pupils who did not want to become famous themselves often said social media had affected their career choices.
Universities expand content creation courses
The range of university courses now includes Content Creation with Marketing, Social Media Content Creation, Digital Content Creation and Media Content Creation.
Courses are available at institutions including Arts University Bournemouth, Arts University Plymouth, the University of Bedfordshire, the University of Brighton, the University of Buckingham, the University of Derby, Greater Manchester University, Hereford College of Arts, Leeds Beckett University, Nottingham Trent University, Ravensbourne University London, the University of Salford and Warwickshire College.
The University of Derby offers two content creation courses. One university has also said that more students are choosing content creation routes over traditional journalism and media courses than ever before.
The growth comes as Britain’s creator economy expands. Oxford Economics’ 2025 economic impact report found that YouTube generated more than £2.8 billion for the UK economy and supported the equivalent of 60,000 full-time jobs.
However, the trend has not been adopted by some of the country’s most prestigious universities.
Oxford said it did not offer courses in these subjects and was not aware of any plans to introduce them. Durham University also said it had no such courses and no plans to offer them.
The University of Sheffield said: “We don’t offer an influencer course or degree at any level, undergraduate or postgraduate, and we have no plans to introduce one.”
