During his junior year of high school, 20-year-old Kyle Okoth and his best friend Daniel were sitting in class when an existential question occurred to them: if there was one thing they wanted to try in life and would regret never pursuing, what would it be? The answer came quickly. “We were like, ‘Bro, we want to be YouTubers,’” Okoth, now a junior in college, says. While not every high school daydream comes to fruition, Okoth has more than made good on his promise. Today, he’s a content creator at the University of Houston, where he turns quintessential college experiences like finals week and move-in day into cinematic vlogs that rack up thousands of views. This year alone, Okoth has made nearly six figures from content creation, including his first brand deal, a partnership with the AI study app Gauth. “It built really fast,” he says. “I was like, ‘Okay, I’m actually a real influencer now.’”
Okoth is part of a growing class of college students gaining a following by turning their university experience into content. From UCLA to NYU and campuses across the country, US universities, in particular, have become fertile ground for student influencers, giving them the chance to earn the kind of side money a job at the dining hall could never match. For prospective students, the allure is obvious: they get an endless window into what they can expect from college life. But it’s not just American high schoolers who are interested.
In recent years, for example, the virality of figures like Alix Earle, who got her influencing start at the University of Miami, and phenomena like #BamaRush, aka the University of Alabama’s sorority recruitment process, have proven a global interest in consuming content set in American colleges. Between headlines about “influencer universities” and gen Z’s creator ambitions, it was perhaps only a matter of time before influencing became a collegiate side hustle. As for the 18- to 22-year-olds broadcasting it all from their dorm room? Well, a tripod and ring light have become as essential back-to-school supplies as textbooks and a new laptop.
Of course, the life of a college influencer is a delicate balancing act. Okoth, for his part, wakes up early to comb through emails from companies and agencies wanting to partner with him. Even when he’s actually in his lectures, he’s still trying to optimise his time. “I’m editing in class,” says the 20-year-old. “I’m trying to figure out when I can film on an hour break, where I can fit in the short-form content that’s due.” The college student, who was motivated to start vlogging after noticing a lack of Black men in the space, has reached a sort of celebrity status on campus, getting recognised daily. On one occasion, he walked into his student centre, head down and earbuds in, only to be swarmed by fans. “All I could hear was people saying, ‘Is that the guy from YouTube? Oh my gosh, I literally applied here because of him,’” he says.
Like Okoth, other college creators are becoming walking advertisements for the schools they attend, giving high school hopefuls a way to see what life on different campuses is actually like. “In the past, you had to look at [a university’s] website or through the traditional college brochure,” says Mia Yilin, a Stanford junior with over 900,000 followers on TikTok and partnerships with ChatGPT, DoorDash and Bloom Nutrition. Today, that old marketing model has changed as social media has become one of the primary ways young people research information, allowing students to share their experiences directly. JunZhe Koh, a senior architecture student and creator at Columbia University, says this kind of content can be particularly valuable for students who might otherwise have little insight into university life. “Many of the people who reach out to me [about my content], both online and in person, are international,” says Koh, himself an international student from Shanghai. “A lot of them are first-generation who have little conception of what college has to offer.”
“All I could hear was people saying, ‘Is that the guy from YouTube? Oh my gosh, I literally applied here because of him’”
With college being a notoriously expensive time, especially in the US, content creation is also providing students like Kamiyah Iman with a degree of financial independence. Last year, the Indiana University junior, who’s been documenting her life since high school, was balancing her coursework with a part-time job at supermarket chain Kroger. Because of influencing, she’s been able to not only quit that side gig, but also take herself to Thailand for her birthday, buy a car in cash and pay her own rent. “You have to be okay with being tired,” says Iman, whose hour-long “College Diaries” videos are her best-performing content. “I have a passion for it, but I also know that, for example, if I don’t post these videos, then I can’t really get groceries tomorrow, because this is my actual job.”
Of course, working your way through university is nothing new, with 70 per cent of college students holding jobs while studying, according to recent data. But influencing can be far more lucrative than traditional hustles like waitressing or working retail, meaning successful college content creators have the potential not only to get by, but to earn real money while making their own schedule.
On top of juggling academic and brand deadlines, college content creators, like anyone who shares their life on the internet, have to deal with trolling too. Josie Stoffman, a creator at the University of Michigan, says that when she first started posting, some peers would sarcastically ask her to take photos with them at parties, then circulate the photos in group chats and on private stories. These days, however, the tune has changed as her following has grown – the business student has gained over 40,000 followers on TikTok and landed brand deals with JBL and CashApp. She says that her best-performing videos are “savable or sendable” content, like college essentials videos where she recommends things like a water bottle cleaner, Liquid IV and pepper spray. “I think I’ve earned a lot more respect on campus,” says the 21-year-old.
Aside from individual creators, influencing is becoming increasingly embedded in higher education on an institutional level. Schools like Ohio University and Arizona State University offer classes on content creation, and last fall, Syracuse University introduced the Centre for the Creator Economy, a first-of-its-kind academic initiative that’s educating “the next generation of professionals across the entire creator value chain.” At Ohio University, the central marketing team employs students who are “basically just content creators for the university,” says Professor Jacob Hiler, who teaches the school’s course on influencing. Hiler himself has a team of student influencers creating content for the school’s Center for Consumer Research and Analytics, which he says has seen a significant rise in applicants since the initiative began.
On the club level, there are even organisations like REACH, a creator economy-focused club that began at the University of Southern California before expanding nationwide. “The college campus is a playground to make content,” says 24-year-old Dylan Huey, REACH’s CEO, whose early forays into social media included managing Lil Huddy at 16. “You have the setting, the campus. You have the characters, the peers around you. You have the equipment, [if] there’s a film school, there’s all these tools that you can use.”
One could see how Huey’s sentiments would have academia’s purists clutching their pearls. But amid the many challenges today’s college students face – rising tuition costs, an abysmal cost of living, a brutal job market and anxiety over what AI might mean for their future careers – can you really blame them for trying their hand at an industry so often sold as a route to quick money and fame? In this economy, probably not. Even if you don’t get a Netflix show or Dancing With the Stars spot like Alix Earle, at the very least, you might be able to support yourself through university – and in 2026, that’s nothing to scoff at.