Yahoo Finance Live examines Duke University’s new class on instructing students on the business behind being an influencer, as well as how much college students are expecting to make in starting-salaries after graduation.
Video Transcript
SEANA SMITH: TikTok is taking over classrooms. Forget accounting, finance, those boring classes that maybe you were enrolled in during college. Colleges are now offering classes geared towards social media success for helping students build their online brands. This past summer, 30 students at Duke University, Rachelle, spent their time learning how to become the ultimate media influencer. At first, this kind of, I guess, caught me by surprise. But it makes a lot of sense because when you take a look at Gen Z, they love their social media platforms, namely TikTok. And you could actually make pretty good money on it.
RACHELLE AKUFFO: And, you know, when you think about it, we’ve seen so much movement in the name, image, likeness space for college athletes. What if you’re not an athlete? What if you just want to figure out your personal brand, as we’re always hearing from a lot of personal finance experts? Get your personal brand together, and you can really leverage that. Perhaps you won’t need to go to college, or perhaps you won’t need to get the same traditional job that you thought you were going to get. I mean, think about it. When we were younger and my brother was, like, riding a BMX, now that’s in the X Games. So you really never know where some of these careers could take you.
So I think it’s a good idea. I think people should at least get an understanding. Perhaps they can do it more safely. Obviously, there can be a dark side to social media. So if this is what will prepare people better as they can also earn more, I think that’s huge. And speaking of earning, I saw this very interesting story that talked about college students having very different expectations of what they think they’re going to make when they graduate and get their first job. College students expect to make $103,880 in their first job after graduation. Reality says that’s closer to $55,000. I have no idea where the disconnect is coming from.
SEANA SMITH: Yeah, I was going to say, we know in the media business that those starting salaries aren’t that great. They’re actually below– they’re well below $50,000 when I started when I had my first PA job. The industry that does pay up are those banking jobs, jobs that you could expect maybe to work 80 to 90 hours a week. You’re going to be making over $100,000 at many of those big banks. But you’re right. The starting salary is significantly lower than what many college seniors are expecting to see. So some of those people will be in for a rude awakening over the coming weeks as colleges start their graduations.
RACHELLE AKUFFO: And we’re in the throes of graduation season. You wouldn’t want some of these graduates to feel disillusioned about what they’re walking into because you hear about this tight labor market and all these great jobs that are out there. But if it’s going to be half of what you think you’re going to make, it is going to be quite the wake up call, indeed.
